#because the books have shown repeated male characters can do as equal to or more than female characters

[the-owl-tree]

U know what, im not done with mapleshade

“Appledusks only crime was cheating” AND THAT WAS MAPLESHADES ONLY CRIME UP UNTIL HER KITS DIED WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND, THEY BOTH BROKE THE CODE AND ONLY MAPLE SUFFERED FOR IT THATS NOT EVEN DEBATABLE ITS THE TRUTH

Mapleshade only had half clan kits with him they both were breaking the same code and that holds truth all the way up until mapleshade starts killing cats, maple got exiled and that lead her babies dying and what happens when she goes to riverclan? They tell her to fuck off and appledusk just lets them he goes “i didn’t actually love her lmao, I’ve learned my lesson” and darkstar just lets him stay, no actual consequences fall onto appledusk for breaking the same rule as maple did

Men in warriors never receive punishment for the same exact code breaking as the women do

The thing about Appledusk is he would’ve been fine to me if they had just not put Frecklewish in the dark forest. Him using the partner he cheated on to vouch for him would’ve been fine, it would’ve been a great way to show him fucking over Mapleshade.

Like I’ve got no issue with him doing bad things it’s that they wrote that whole article on why Frecklewish deserved damnation for not jumping into a raging river meanwhile all of the male characters involved get to go to kitty heaven.

Also the fact that Crowfeather is being considered for leadership and Leafpool had to go on trial. Food for thought!

[destiel-otp-yayy]

A Great “Fuck You” to the Supernatural Narrative

After season 15 episode 18, there was hope, love, sacrifice and a reinforcement of the ideas of inclusivity and family. Ironically, the episode titled “Despair” gave us hope. The show has always stood for family, love, hope and free will and disappointingly they took their own narrative and threw it out of the window into literal hell.

Just to clarify my stance, the actors did a terrific job and I couldn’t be more proud of Jared, Jensen, Misha and Alex and literally every other actor who has been a part of the show since season 1. You gave us everything and we love you for that. Additionally, we also sympathize with the fact that you unknowingly became a part of a show which after the finale represents nothing but homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism and everything the show claimed to be against.

So with this, I need to say some things.

Media is an amazingly powerful medium of storytelling, whether it be fictional or non-fictional. However, the fictional stories enjoy a kind of liberty that non-fictional stories do not and somehow still equally create an impact on their viewers. Media like movies, television shows and novels and books have a huge impact on their audience from a psychological and a sociological perspective. I will focus on the ‘Social Learning’ perspective to emphasize my point. Social learning, or rather any learning takes place in four stages in any human being; attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. This means that in order for something to become a part of an individual’s behaviour, they usually go through all these four stages. Let’s take an example. A teenaged girl is watching a high school centric movie where the lead character who is loved by everyone wears ripped jeans. She pays attention to that detail, retains it and tries to reproduce that aspect by wearing ripped jeans herself to be liked. If this behaviour of hers is liked and appreciated by her peers, the behaviour gets reinforced and the chances of the behaviour being repeated increasing.

Consequently, if the teenaged girl sees many loved lead characters from different movies and television shows wearing ripped jeans, her reaction to finally seeing someone wearing ripped jeans in real life would most likely be positive and appreciative. This is the power of media. It can make and break perceptions and plays a huge role in the behaviour portrayed in the society.

People might come at me saying that media is technically the mirror of the society and tends to represent the society the way it is, but I am not talking about realism or non-fictional stories, I am specifically talking about fictional storytelling and will later delve into the narrative created by the longest-running sci-fi television show ‘Supernatural’. Television shows like Supernatural, The Boys, Flash and Arrow don’t represent reality in its pure form but take the fantastical approach towards reality. This basically means that they can show the nature of the world and humans their stand while tweaking reality the way they want. You can have superhumans who are power-hungry and apathetic to represent the modern-day corporate organisations or you can show two brother fighting for God to show how much humans value love, hope and free will. These grand narratives which the shows stand for remains the same and are realistic and relatable despite the obviously fictional storyline. This is what truly makes a good fictional story.

However, this also means that they get the liberty to play with the characters as much as they want. They can literally show men in drag and women in commanding positions, masculine men (or whatever that even means) as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, people of colour at leads and differently-abled people as not objects of pity but rather people who represent strength and hope. This is necessary and it is not wrong for people to ask for representation because this is what will change people’s perception and yes, the onus of this falls on the showrunners and the writers who are creating this fictional world.

The fact that even after fifteen seasons, it was physically impossible for the writers and the showrunners of Supernatural to give us this representation disgusts me. They were able to show an ending where apparently it represented hope, love and family for the two white, male, heterosexual leads on the expense of the sacrifice made my queer, female, differently-abled and Asian characters. Supernatural basically said, “There is hope for the white, straight men and the rest of you can go to hell".

In addition to this, they baited us with the return of our last queer representation by putting Castiel on every promo picture in order to increase the number of views, which they got. They tainted Castiel’s love confession by refusing to acknowledge his love and sacrifice in the subsequent episodes. I refused to believe that the confession scene was homophobic or adhered to the trope of “Bury your Gays” before knowing what happens in the finale, but Supernatural pulled a one over the trope and gave us worse than that. They not only refused to show Dean’s reaction to a love confession but also refused to acknowledge everything that Castiel had done because of course, a queer character doesn’t deserve screen time and appreciation.

Sadly, there is an addition to the above mentioned problematic aspects to this show. Since season 8 specifically, the show has been baiting us with bisexual Dean Winchester. Now, if Dean were an actual, real human being, what I’m about to say would be highly unethical. However, he is not a real person. Dean is a fictional character who represents strength, love, hope, free-will and selflessness who could still represent all of these things while being queer. The writers and the showrunners baited us with Dean’s bisexuality time and time again through background colours, subtext and his scenes with Castiel. But of course, how could a white, male warrior like Dean Winchester be bisexual? How can they break the heteronormative box created for the him which depends on the possibility of him having sex with only women, because that is the reason why Dean represents strength, love, hope, free-will and selflessness. Homophobia runs so deep within this show that Dean wasn’t allowed to reply to Castiel or even acknowledge his presence. He wasn’t allowed a goodbye to the character who literally died countless times to save him. Dean never mentioned how Cas died, not even to his brother because a queer person doesn’t deserve attention. They don’t deserve appreciation and respect. Castiel, after his “homosexual declaration of love” literally went to the Empty, which is canonically a place “worse than hell”.

Enough about the queers already right? Let’s talk about the one differently-abled representation on the show. Technically Eileen should’ve been back, she should’ve been alive. If she is alive, knowing the history between her and Sam, it would make sense if Sam ultimately ended up having a family with her. Then why wasn’t she mentioned? Why did Sam marry some unknown white, petite, able-bodied woman? This argument in keeping in mind that even if they couldn’t have brought the actress to act due to COVID-19, they could’ve still mentioned her if they wanted to (thing to note here: If they wanted to). However, how could an abled bodied warrior like Sam Winchester end up having a family with a differently-abled woman? Blasphemy.

The show managed to kill the gays, women, member of the black/Asian community, differently-abled people and everyone who did not fit into their white, male, heterosexual narrative and this is problematic. This is problematic because this is (was) a fictional show and they could’ve shown all this and still followed the storyline they wished to, but they purposely decided to not do that.

So yeah, fuck you Andrew Dabb, Robert Singer, Eric Kripe and anyone who had the power to change this narrative because you failed your audience, you failed your society and most importantly, you failed your own story.

[apple-grass-and-smiles]

Anakin Skywalker and Gifts

Hi, welcome to another round of my Star Wars thoughts. Ever since the Phantom Apprentice aired I’ve been thinking a lot about Anakin and the gifts he’s given people. As a person who spends his entire life with relatively few possessions he can call his own, it is logical to assume that physical gifts are especially meaningful to Anakin. Over the past few months, I have also been thinking a lot about how Anakin is defined by the women in his life more so than the men (male characters often act as a foil to Anakin, which is a meta of its own about Anakin and his more stereotypically feminine characteristics). Then, because my brain does that, it felt logical to analyze Anakin’s gifts that he has given the women in his life and how those physical tokens represent his relationship with them. Below I’ll go over gifts Anakin gives Shmi, Padmé, Ahsoka, and Leia in roughly chronological order. (There’s also a TL;DR at the end if you want the short version.)

Shmi and C-3P0

The gift Anakin gives Shmi is a partially-finished C-3P0. He states in TPM that he is building Threepio to help Shmi and when Anakin leaves, Threepio acts as his stand-in (something that is a bit of a trend for Anakin). Anakin knows that his mother’s life is difficult and that the best thing he can give her is someone who will help to ease the burdens she carries. By leaving Threepio with Shmi he is doing his best to ensure that 1) someone will be there to take care of her the same way she always did for him and 2) that she won’t be alone. While we don’t see much interaction between Shmi and Threepio in Legends or canon, it is easy to assume that, especially in the early times after Anakin left, Threepio was Shmi’s main companion and tie to her son, so Anakin’s gift is more a surrogate son and constant companion than a protocol droid.

It is also worth noting that while Anakin clearly didn’t want Threepio sold (he says so in TPM), the droid could have been sold and brought Shmi money if that was what was needed. You could claim that Anakin also left some financial security and a better chance at Shmi buying her freedom by leaving Threepio; this just has less canon support.

Padmé and...

The Japor Snippet

Anakin gives Padmé tons of gifts over their time together. The first, and most frequently referenced, is the japor snippet. Anakin tells Padmé exactly what this gift is supposed to give/represent for her (good fortune and a reminder of him). From an out-of-universe point of view, the snippet also acts as a great visual symbol of Anakin and Padmé’s relationship. You see it a lot in ROTS as a marker for when Anakin and Padmé get to be themselves instead of their public personas. Ultimately, Lucas uses the snippet as a visual shortcut to remind us of the love between these two and Anakin’s intense infatuation/love/devotion for Padmé. For simplicity’s sake, and in hopes of keeping this from getting too long since the japor snippet’s symbolism can easily be an entire meta on its own, I’m saying that it represents good fortune and Anakin’s enduring devotion to Padmé.

C-3P0

This is a gift that is really only explicitly stated (to my knowledge) in Stover’s ROTS novelization. He writes a scene where Anakin passes Threepio onto Padmé very early on in their marriage as a “devotion-gift”. He explains that he can’t really keep Threepio because he’s a Jedi and that even if he could it wouldn’t make much sense for a Jedi to have a protocol droid. When “giving” Threepio to Padmé, Anakin explains that he “didn’t have many friends when [he] was a kid...so [he] built one”. In this case, Threepio once again acts as a stand-in for Anakin when he is away, but this time the droid is more of a friend than a helper or son like he was for Shmi. Anakin knows he can’t always be there for Padmé so he passes along his childhood friend and one of his greatest creations to her so that she can always have a friend with her. 

His Lightsaber

This scene is great because once again Anakin lays out exactly what this particular gift represents. He repeats Obi-Wan’s mantra that the lightsaber is a Jedi’s life before handing it over to Padmé. There’s really not much to explain here, but this does create a nice parallel once Anakin gives Ahsoka her lightsabers, which, partially, symbolize him giving her her life/ability survive. Here he puts his life in Padmé’s hands as a sign of trust and devotion and later he will hand Ahsoka her blades to get across a similar message. 

His Padawan Braid

Honorable mention to this *maybe*-kind-of-canon gift that features in the 2003 Clone Wars and the Stover ROTS novelization. In both pieces of media, Anakin gives Padmé his Padawan braid almost immediately after being Knighted. In Stover’s book, he says that the braid is a devotion-gift to Padmé and the “one thing that [Anakin] truly owned, that he had earned, that he was not required to renounce. One gift he could give to celebrate their love.” There are lots of things this gift could represent (I personally lean towards that it suggests that while he has devoted the past decade to the Jedi, he plans to give his future to Padmé), but since the braid really has no presence in things that are undeniably canon that I know of, we’re keeping this short and literal and saying the braid equals his devotion to Padmé. 

Ahsoka and Her Lightsabers-

At this point I think there have easily been thousands of words written about Anakin giving Ahsoka back her lightsabers and all of the ones I have seen are stunning. In particular I want to point out Dave Filoni’s interpretation of what the lightsabers, and the fact that Anakin modified them to be blue, represent:

“Him tinkering with her lightsabers while she is gone shows that he was always thinking of her. And the lightsabers are then a representation of her in the story, and his thoughtfulness regarding her.” -Dave Filoni (transcript taken from here and the quote is in this video)

So, for Filoni and I blue lightsabers equal a representation of Ahsoka’s role in Anakin’s life. If you want to read more about this idea, I’d strongly recommend these: meta by @soccialcreature​ and @novaewalker​, fic-like meta by @cross-d-a​, and meta by @meandmyechoes​. They all say what I’m thinking much more succinctly and clearly!

The other angle I want to point out is written about beautifully by @gffa​ here. Basically, the lightsabers come to represent not just Anakin’s role in Ahsoka’s life, but also the Jedi and the home and people Ahsoka desperately wants to return to. Lightsabers have always been the symbol of the Jedi both in- and out-of-universe. As has been mentioned and shown countless times in canon, lightsabers are also a symbol of a Jedi’s ability to survive (”This weapon is your life.”) and Anakin giving Ahsoka back her lightsabers is ultimately what keeps her alive throughout the Siege of Mandalore arc and her leaving one of them behind is what sells the story of her death, protecting her from being hunted by the Empire for a while. 

Ultimately, the lightsabers are full of symbolism, but it is most worth noting that they represent: 1) Anakin caring/thinking about Ahsoka, 2) the Jedi and Ahsoka’s chance to return to them and Anakin, and 3) Ahsoka’s ability to survive the events that will follow. 

Side note: I think it is also worth noting that Anakin tried to give Ahsoka back her silka beads at the end of the S5, but she turns them down. I’d argue that while the lightsabers stand for the Jedi as a group, the beads were a symbol of Anakin asking Ahsoka specifically to come back as his Padawan. When Anakin offered the silka beads he wanted Ahsoka to come back and to have nothing have changed, which is why she has to turn them down. The lightsabers are an open invitation to rejoin the Jedi when she is ready and a promise that he will accept her back whenever and however she chooses to return. 

Leia and Luke-

This one is a bit tricky. Leia obviously doesn’t have a great relationship with Anakin and Anakin doesn’t ever get a chance to develop a meaningful one with her. However, I think Leia is fundamental in understanding Anakin and that’s why I felt it was important to include her in this. She is probably the character who Anakin would say is the best representation of his legacy since she manages to symbolize so many parts of what makes Anakin Anakin. (She is a blood relative to Shmi and Padmé and therefore representative, at least in appearance and genetics, of them; she has a lot of Ahsoka’s personality; if you stick with Stover’s ROTS then she’s the child that Anakin sensed was focused on since he didn’t sense Luke...; she’s a great amalgamation of traits and people that defined Anakin.) While we never have an obvious moment where Vader hands over a gift to Leia the same way he does in all the examples above, I would argue that Anakin’s gift to Leia is the most meaningful one of all: he gives her Luke. 

People have pointed out over the years (I tried to find the posts about it but couldn’t; if you find one, please let me know) that Leia must have been thrilled to learn Luke was her brother because a twin meant she had family again. Luke is one of Leia’s best friends and a source of hope for her. Legends, and possibly canon that I don’t know about, has moments where Luke helps Leia to find the strength and peace to finally be able to forgive Vader for the horrible things he did to her and that helps her to be able to be happier and more fulfilled. This is definitely the most abstract of all the gifts, but I think it is important to recognize Luke and the love, forgiveness, and peace he brings into Leia’s life as the one gift that Anakin gave his daughter. He gave her so much pain, but also a person to help carry her through it, which is ultimately what all of his gifts have been about. Luke and Leia are the culmination of Anakin’s attempts to give companionship and love to the women he loves most in the galaxy. 

TL;DR-

All of Anakin’s gifts to the women he loves are meant to represent something  more abstract/deeper he wants to give them. Shmi gets Threepio who acts as a surrogate for her missing son and also provides much-needed help. Padmé gets multiple gifts from Anakin: the japor snippet (representing good fortune and her relationship with Anakin), C-3P0 (to be her friend when Anakin is away), his lightsaber (lightsabers equal the life of the Jedi they belong to), and his Padawan braid (open to interpretation, though I think, and Stover implies by calling it a devotion-gift, it’s a sign of him devoting his future to her). Ahsoka gets her lightsabers from Anakin, which represent that she will always have a place with the Jedi, the place she has in his life, and her ability to survive. The modification of the colors signify that he has continued to think about and care for her while she has been gone. Finally, Anakin gives Leia her twin brother, who helps to fill Leia’s need for family and brings additional peace, forgiveness, and joy into her life. All of these add together to tell a story of Anakin trying throughout his life to pass along love and his companionship to the women that mean the most to him.

[skruttet]

I flicked through the Tuula Karjalainen book and read bits and pieces of it already and there’s this one section about homosexuality in it that I found really interesting so I thought I’d post it here, even though it’s a bit long oops, in case any of y’all were interested in reading it! Like, I never knew Tove had a gay cousin whom Tove was supportive of in terms of her lesbian identity and whose partner wrote a dissertation on Tove’s books?? So fascinating! Also was not expecting the sentence “The Hattifatteners resemble a wandering flock of penises or condoms”; usually they’re referred to more subtly with words like ‘phallic’ but not here xD

OPEN AND CLOSED

Many researchers have looked for references to homosexuality in Tove’s writings. Although she did not talk about it in public, she made no attempt to conceal it either, and her relationship with Tuulikki Pietilä was known to everyone. The two women took part in official state events such as the President’s Independence Day ball, where they were clearly the first to attend the event officially as a lesbian couple. Their relationship was so open and obvious it was that it was not newsworthy. It was hard to build a scandal on something that everyone knew - even the press, which liked to chase stories of that kind.

Psychological explanations of various kinds often have a chapter of their own in the analyses of Tove’s books, and sometimes unusual views have been expressed. The Swedish scholar Barbro K. Gustafsson earned her doctorate in 1992 from Uppsala University’s Theological Faculty with a dissertation on Tove’s books for adults. She made a special study of The Doll’s House, Sun City, ‘The Great Journey’ and Fair Play, and although her thesis also covered the Moomin stories, they were dealt with more briefly.

Perhaps surprisingly, Tove agreed to be interviewed by Gustafsson during her research work, and even participated in it actively by attending Gustafsson’s dissertation defence. The fact that Tove was prepared to do this may partly be explained by a family connection: Gustafsson was the partner of Tove’s beloved cousin Kerstin. When Kerstin, from a religious family, had realised that she was lesbian, Tove had been extremely supportive. Tove and her friends also helped Kerstin with many issues related to her lesbian identity.

Tove refused to give any public interviews about the dissertation defence, and did not want to talk about her private life or relationships. She returned to Finland as soon as the defence and the celebrations for Gustafsson’s Ph.D. were over, though she did issue a press release. In it she followed convention, thanking Gustafsson for the clarity of her book and her extensive knowledge of the subject - she had, Tove thought, succeeded in uncovering a rarely explored area of the unconscious. She also said that though much was written about authors, it was perhaps best done after their death, if at all. As if to soften the blow, she stressed the degree of trust between herself and Gustafsson. She said that following the progress of the research had been like an adventure, and that it had almost allowed her to see herself as a pioneer.

In her study, Gustafsson focuses on a dream that Tove had in the 1930s and found strangely threatening. In it she had seen large, black, wolf-like dogs on a seashore at sunset. A psychologist had explained to her that the dream was about repressed drives and forbidden sensuality.

In her thesis, Gustafsson is perhaps prone to detect elements of homosexuality too easily in very ordinary matters connected with the sea and archipelago life. She also discussed the wild animals that Tove often returned to both in the Moomin books and in her works for adults. In Moominland Midwinter the dog Sorry-oo wants to join the wolves and learn to howl like them. The story concerns the desire to leave the species into which one has been born, something that proves impossible. In The True Deceiver, the wolfhound plays a central role in the power relationship between the two women. Numerous readers have seen allusions to homosexuality in the comic strip about a little dog that falls in love with a cat. It realises that the love is wrong and becomes depressed. In the end the cat turns out to be a dog in disguise. This time the problem has a simple solution.

In Tove’s books there are repeated descriptions of people or Moominvalley creatures becoming ‘electric’, and this is clearly an important theme in her writing. The Hattifatteners resemble a wandering flock of penises or condoms - in thunderstorms they become electric, and then burn anyone who gets close to them. It is very easy to imagine that the electrification is an allegory for oestrus. The Mymble is also able to become electric - with her countless children she is the most sensual character in Moominvalley. The Whomper Toft in Moominvalley in November is the master of thunder and lightning. He lets the Creature out of a locked cupboard, and all that remains is a smell of electricity. The Creature runs away and grows even larger during thunderstorms, when lightning fills the sky, but is too big, angry and bewildered to be so big and angry. In ‘The Doll’s House’, electrification brings about a drama of jealousy between three men that leads to violence. There is a similar outcome in ‘The Great Journey’, where the mother feels the electrifying presence of her daughter’s female friend, whereupon the daughter becomes jealous.

Fair Play is a book about the relationship between two women in their seventies who are set in their ways, and their daily life together. Gustafsson uses the narrative to examine their mutual roles in the light of the old custom of categorising lesbians either as ‘femmes’ or ‘butches’, the latter having more masculine traits - a way of seeing a relationship between two women as a copy of a heterosexual one. Jonna and her prototype Tuulikki correspond to the ‘butch’ profile. Tove also portrayed Tuulikki as Moominvalley’s Too-ticky, a rather burly, masculine figure who keeps a knife in her belt.

Quoting Lord Alfred Douglas and the line of verse that was mentioned at the indecency trial of Oscar Wilde, Gustafsson writes that homosexual love is the love that does not dare speak its name. Although the time in which Tove lived was quite different from Wilde’s, there were similar prejudices and tensions in society - and, of course, they influenced her writing. Over the centuries women were not expected to write blatant erotic descriptions, but had instead to express themselves in allegorical terms. It was supposed that they did experience such feelings - and even more so when they were the result of unlawful love.

Tove’s books contain no openly erotic episodes or writing of a sexual nature and in this her writing is typical of women’s literature of her time. Sometimes it feels as though the characters in her books have to some extent been freed from sexuality. Their relationships are based more on understanding and friendship than on ardent passion, though their jealousy can sometimes take violent forms. Many things are veiled in highly metaphorical language. In the books that Tove wrote for adults, male and female couples are portrayed interchangeably without particular emphasis. In many of her books, as in her life, homosexuality was so natural that there was no need to make a fuss about it. While it was not to be denied, it was not to be given a high profile either. It was almost as though she backed out of dealing with her sexuality too openly, and in fact she forbade her biographer to write about her love affairs. Since the biography was written for children, this kind of advance censorship was possible.

In the story ‘The Great Journey’ (’Den stora resan’), two women in their seventies, Rosa and Elena, together with Rosa’s mother, live a life of humdrum joys and sorrows and work on their creative tasks. Among all three, physical love is a taboo subject. Elena asks Rosa: ‘What does she know, in any case? Nothing. She doesn’t know anything about such matters.’ The two women are unable to show their feelings for each other if Rosa’s mother is present. They plan a holiday together, but Rosa changes her mind and goes away with her mother instead. She remembers the promise she made in the nursery: ‘I’ll take you with me, I’ll steal you from Papa, we’ll go to a jungle or sail out on the Mediterranean... I’ll build you a castle where you shall be queen.’

Organisations that promoted sexual equality in Finland and the Nordic countries gave Tove awards for her pioneering work on behalf of sexual minorities, and she has certainly been an extremely important role model and author in the gay community. She had the ability to be completely open, yet at the same time quite private - as in the case of the dissertation, when she gave Gustafsson interviews and took part in the defence, but would not agree to answer questions from journalists who were interested in her private life. In relation to her lesbian identity, as shown by this very situation, she sometimes came out of the closet, and at other times she concealed the truth.

Tove’s homosexuality inspired a great many researchers and readers to look for the most varied interpretations. Perhaps her slightly sardonic attitude to this excessive interest can be seen in her song ‘Psychomania’ (’Psykofnattvisan’), written in 1963 for the revue Krasch and set to music by Erna Tauro. The song is like an obscure parody, in which psychoanalytic terms form a wild, cacophonous reality all of their own. It is as though she is drifting among people who are intently looking for something and who begin to see the signs of it everywhere. In fact, they can no longer see anything else because their heads are filled with ‘psychomania’. The song is a lengthy one, and operates on many levels. It also demonstrates that its author was familiar with the psychological terminology of the day - Tove had always been fascinated by interpretations of the human mind and she knew the terminology back to front, so well in fact that she could play with it:

I pore and pore and where I pore the symbols gather more and more I sink right through the floor into depression and tendentious apperception...

-Tove Jansson: Work and Love by Tuula Karjalainen

[arcticdementor]

Can you believe ...?

Perhaps no question has been repeated more times in reaction to more events this year than that one.

The most recent major outrage in the Jewish community, now several news cycles behind us, came on the Shabbat before Yom Kippur—the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—when many American Jews seemed dumbfounded by what was to me predictable news: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, progressive superstar, had pulled out of an event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated because of his efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. Rabin was, as Bill Clinton said at his funeral, “a martyr for his nation’s peace.”

…

But it wasn’t AOC who was mixed up. The savvy politician had read the room and was sending a clear signal about who belongs in the new progressive coalition and who does not. The confusion—and there seems to be a good deal of it these days—is among American Jews who think that by submitting to ever-changing loyalty tests they can somehow maintain the old status quo and their place inside of it.

Did you see that the Ethical Culture Fieldston School hosted a speaker that equated Israelis with Nazis? Did you know that Brearley is now asking families to write a statement demonstrating their commitment to “anti-racism”? Did you see that Chelsea Handler tweeted a clip of Louis Farrakhan? Did you see that protesters tagged a synagogue in Kenosha with “Free Palestine” graffiti? Did you hear about the march in D.C. where they chanted “Israel, we know you, you murder children too”? Did you hear that the Biden campaign apologized to Linda Sarsour after initially disavowing her? Did you see that Twitter suspended Bret Weinstein’s civic organization but still allows the Iranian ayatollah to openly promote genocide of the Jewish people? Did you see that Mayor Bill de Blasio scapegoated “the Jewish community” for the spread of COVID in New York, while defending mass protests on the grounds that this is a “historic moment of change”?

Listen, it’s been a hell of a year. We all have a lot going on, much of it unnerving and some of it dire. Moreover, many of these stories only surface on places like Twitter; they don’t make it into the pages of The New York Times or your friends’ Facebook feeds, which is where most Americans get their news these days. Reporters don’t cover these stories adequately, contextualizing them, telling readers which ones are true and which ones aren’t, which ones matter and which ones don't.

So it makes sense that many smart, well-intentioned people are confused. Or rather: Looking for someone to explain why an emerging movement that purports to advance the ideals they have always supported—fairness, justice, righting historical wrongs—feels like it is doing the opposite.

…

To understand the enormity of the change we are now living through, take a moment to understand America as the overwhelming majority of its Jews believed it was—and perhaps as we always assumed it would be.

It was liberal.

Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy.

The liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things—indeed, the most important things—in life that were located outside of the realm of politics: friendships, art, music, family, love. This was a world in which Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be close friends. Because, as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes.

Crucially, this liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised.

Racism was evil because it contradicted the foundations of this worldview, since it judged people not based on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin. And while America’s founders were guilty of undeniable hypocrisy, their own moral failings did not invalidate their transformational project. The founding documents were not evil to the core but “magnificent,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, because they were “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” In other words: The founders themselves planted the seeds of slavery’s destruction. And our second founding fathers—abolitionists like Frederick Douglass—made it so. America would never be perfect, but we could always strive toward building a more perfect union.

I didn’t even know that this worldview had a name because it was baked into everything I came into contact with—my parents’ worldviews, the schools they sent me to, the synagogues we attended, the magazines and newspapers we read, and so on.

…

No longer. American liberalism is under siege. There is a new ideology vying to replace it.

No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology”—as in, the successor to liberalism.

…

The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game—due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself—must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with—designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.

…

Critical race theory says there is no such thing as neutrality, not even in the law, which is why the very notion of colorblindness—the Kingian dream of judging people not based on the color of their skin but by the content of their character—must itself be deemed racist. Racism is no longer about individual discrimination. It is about systems that allow for disparate outcomes among racial groups. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, then the course must have been flawed and should be dismantled.

…

In fact, any feature of human existence that creates disparity of outcomes must be eradicated: The nuclear family, politeness, even rationality itself can be defined as inherently racist or evidence of white supremacy, as a Smithsonian institution suggested this summer. The KIPP charter schools recently eliminated the phrase “work hard” from its famous motto “Work Hard. Be Nice.” because the idea of working hard “supports the illusion of meritocracy.” Denise Young Smith, one of the first Black people to reach Apple’s executive team, left her job in the wake of asserting that skin color wasn’t the only legitimate marker of diversity—the victim of a “diversity culture” that, as the writer Zaid Jilani has noted, is spreading “across the entire corporate world and is enforced by a highly educated activist class.”

The most powerful exponent of this worldview is Ibram X. Kendi. His book “How to Be an Antiracist” is on the top of every bestseller list; his photograph graces GQ; he is on Time’s most influential people of the year; and his outfit at Boston University was recently awarded $10 million from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

…

And just in case moral suasion is ineffective, Kendi has backup: Use the power of the federal government to make it so. “To fix the original sin of racism,” he wrote in Politico, “Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals [sic]: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.” To back up the amendment, he proposes a Department of Anti-Racism. This department would have the power to investigate not just local governments but private businesses and would punish those “who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” Imagine how such a department would view a Jewish day school, which suggests that the Jews are God’s chosen people, let alone one that teaches Zionism.

Kendi—who, it should be noted, now holds Elie Wiesel’s old chair at Boston University—believes that “to be antiracist is to see all cultures in their differences as on the same level, as equals.” He writes: “When we see cultural difference we are seeing cultural difference—nothing more, nothing less.” It’s hard to imagine that anyone could believe that cultures that condone honor killings of unchaste young women are “nothing more, nothing less” than culturally different from our own. But whether he believes it or not, it’s obvious that embracing such relativism is a highly effective tool for ascension and seizing power.

It should go without saying that, for Jews, an ideology that contends that there are no meaningful differences between cultures is not simply ridiculous—we have an obviously distinct history, tradition and religion that has been the source of both enormous tragedy as well as boundless gifts—but is also, as history has shown, lethal.

By simply existing as ourselves, Jews undermine the vision of a world without difference. And so the things about us that make us different must be demonized, so that they can be erased or destroyed: Zionism is refashioned as colonialism; government officials justify the murder of innocent Jews in Jersey City; Jewish businesses can be looted because Jews “are the face of capital.” Jews are flattened into “white people,” our living history obliterated, so that someone with a straight face can suggest that the Holocaust was merely “white on white crime.”

This is no longer a fringe view. As the philosopher Peter Boghossian has noted: “This ideology is the dominant moral orthodoxy in our universities, and has seeped out and spread to every facet of American life— publishing houses, tech, arts, theater, newspapers, media,” and, increasingly, corporations. It has not grabbed power by dictates from above, but by seizing the means of sense-making from below.

Over the past few decades and with increasing velocity over the last several years, a determined young cohort has captured nearly all of the institutions that produce American cultural and intellectual life. Rather than the institutions shaping them, they have reshaped the institutions. You don’t need the majority inside an institution to espouse these views. You only need them to remain silent, cowed by a fearless and zealous minority who can smear them as racists if they dare disagree.

It is why California attempted to pass an ethnic studies curriculum whose only mention of Jews was to explain how they, along with Irish immigrants, were invited into whiteness.

It is why those who claim to care about diversity and inclusion don’t seem to care about the deep-seated racism against Asian Americans at schools like Harvard.

It is why a young Jewish woman named Rose Ritch was recently run out of the USC student government. Ms. Ritch stood accused of complicity in racism because, following the Soviet lie, to be a Zionist is to be nothing less than a racist. Her fellow students waged a campaign to hound her out of her position: “Impeach her Zionist ass,” they insisted.

It is why the Democratic Socialists of America, the emerging power center of the Democratic Party in New York, sent a questionnaire to New York City Council candidates that included a pledge not to travel to Israel.

It is why Tamika Mallory, an outspoken fan of Louis Farrakhan, gets the glamour treatment in a photoshoot for Vogue.

And this is why AOC, the standard bearer of America’s new left, didn’t think Yitzhak Rabin was worth the political capital, but goes out of her way, a few days later, to praise the Black Panthers. She is the harbinger of a political reality in which Jews will have little power.

It does not matter how progressive you are, how vegan or how gay, how much you want universal health care and pre-K and to end the drug war. To believe in the justness of the existence of the Jewish state—to believe in Jewish particularism at all—is to make yourself an enemy of this movement.

…

If you’re nearing the end of the essay wondering why this hasn’t been explained to you before, the answer is because, yet again, we find ourselves in another moment in Jewish history at a time of great need and urgency with communal leadership who, with rare exception, will not address the danger.

I understand why people have been blind to this. Life has been good—exceedingly good—for American Jews for half a century. Many older communal leaders seem to lack the moral imagination to see this threat. It’s also hard for anyone to hear the words: They’re just not that into you.

So when I try to discuss this with many Jews in leadership positions, what I face is either boomer-esque entitlement—a sense that the way the world worked for them must be the way it will always work—or outright resistance. Oh please, wokeness isn’t important anywhere but in silly Twitter microclimates. When you explain that no, in fact, this ideology has taken over universities, publishing houses, the media, museums and is now making quick work of corporate America, you hit another roadblock: Isn’t this just righting some historical injustices? What could go wrong? You then have to explain what could go wrong—what is already going wrong—is that it is ruining the lives of regular, good people, and the more institutions and companies fall prey to it, the more lives it will ruin.

…

Last month, I participated in a Zoom event attended by several major Jewish philanthropists. After briefly talking about my experience at The New York Times, I noted that if they wanted to understand what happened to me, they needed to appreciate the power of that new, still-nameless creed that has hijacked the paper and so many other institutions essential to American life. I’ve been thinking about what happened next ever since.

One of the funders on the call launched into me, explaining that Ibram X. Kendi’s work was vital, and portrayed me as retrograde and uncool for opposing the ideology du jour. Because this person is prominent and powerful enough to send signals that others in the Jewish world follow, the comments managed to both sideline me and stun almost everyone else into silence.

These people may be the most enraging: those with the financial security to oppose this ideology and demur, so desperate to be seen as hip; for their children to keep their spots at the right prep schools; so that they can be seated at the right tables at the right benefits; so that they are honored at Brown or Harvard; so that business does well enough that they can renovate their house in Aspen or East Hampton. Desperate to remain in good odor with the right people, they are willing to close their eyes to what is coming for the rest of us.

Young Jews who grasp the scope of this problem and want to fight it thus find themselves up against two fronts: their ideological enemies and their own communal leadership. But it is among this group—people with no social or political capital to hoard, some of them not even out of college—that I find our community’s seers. The dynamic reminds me of the one Theodor Herzl faced: The communal establishment of his time was deeply opposed to his Zionist project. It was the poorer, younger Jews—especially those from Russia—who first saw the necessity of Zionism’s lifesaving vision.

Funders and communal leaders who are falling over themselves to make alliances with fashionable activists and ideas enjoy a decadent indulgence that these young proud Jews cannot afford. They live far from the violence that affects Jews in places like Crown Heights and Borough Park. If things go south in one city, they can take refuge in a second home. It may be cost-free for the wealthy to flirt with an ideology that suggests abolishing the police or the nuclear family or capitalism. But for most Jews and most Americans, losing those ideas comes with a heavy price.

[film-focus-mind]

my essay on autistic representation in the media

I wrote this for three months for my usem class, it’s just my opinions on what is wrong with most autistic media representation

Abstract

The representation of those with autism in the media is, simply put, stereotypical and deeply flawed. From depicting people with autism as eternal children, rude, idiotic, or genius savants, the media portrayals play into and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. This portrayal affects how society views autism, despite how consciously some people realize that the autistic representation is not accurate and socially harmful. If a character with autistic traits is shown in a negative light, people will form implicit biases and associate autistic traits as being wrong and bad. Media representation of those with autism has to change to be more accurate and less abusive and stereotyped. There needs to be better autistic representation for the sake of both neurotypical people and people with autism. Stereotypes need to be rejected and replaced with people with autism as being people.

Keywords: autism, media representation, stereotypes, Autism Spectrum Disorder

My interest in autistic representation is personal. My little brother Leo was diagnosed with autism at age three. Despite this diagnosis, he never knew he had autism until he was thirteen. Around that time, the popular kids show Sesame Street started featuring an autistic character named Julia (Cohen, 2017). Julia talked like my brother did: in short incomplete sentences and sometimes repeating what others had just said, she got upset when there were loud noises, and she could not stand the feeling of paint on her fingers. As Leo and I watched the show and the character’s interactions with others, it dawned on me that Leo didn’t know what he and Julia had in common. My parents never told him because they didn’t want Leo to feel different.

“Leo, do you know why you’re like Julia?” I asked.

“Why?” Leo replied. “Why” in Leo’s case also meant who, what, where, when, and how. 

“It’s because you both are autistic!” I explained. “Your brains both work just a little bit differently.”

Although the Julia of Sesame Street was created as a caring and positive role model, she’s one of the few instances of positive representation of people with autism on television. Most autism representation shows people with autism as rude, child-like, dumb, or worse. Many characters who are on the autism spectrum are quite one- dimensional. Having autistic traits has been portrayed in a negative light or in an overly simplistic way. Autistic represetation hardly factors the experiences of actual people with autism. If the media portrayed people with autism as equals, there would be dozens of Julias in mainstream media (Safran, 1998). How is the media portraying people with Autism Spectrum Disorder? How can things improve? What does this say about society’s views on autism? 

For clarification, the terms ‘high functioning’ and ‘low functioning’ are problematic and will not be used in the context of this discussion because those words hold a very discriminatory view of autism, one that prioritizes the neurotypical ways of functioning over other ways of functioning. In this paper, the terms autism and Asperger’s syndrome will be used to differentiate between the two distinctly different types of ways that autism affects people. It is important to remember that Asperger, the doctor whose name is used to describe a branch of autism, was a Nazi (Baron-Cohen, 2018). That historical association speaks great lengths about how autism is/was viewed, considering how Asperger describes autism. Asperger’s opinions on autism would be considered very outdated and insulting to contemporary people with autism (Draaisma, 2009). 

Portrayals of autism in terms of fictional characters can be split into two distinct tropes, which are infantilization (Stevenson, Harp, & Gernsbacher 2014) and the savant (Draaisma, 2009). The former usually applies to autism generally, while the latter applies to those exhibiting the characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome. Tropes are different character archetypes that group characters by their believed-to-be stereotypical traits. In a few cases of media representation, both tropes can apply to the same character, but for the most part they do not overlap. Both tropes only give a glimpse at the complexities of autism, usually leaving out autistic traits that can be seen as good.

To start, there’s infantilization (Stevenson, Harp & Gernsbacher, 2014), or for a better term, the eternal child trope. This trope portrays characters with autism of any age as child-like, and usually also naive or idiotic. These characters can be either autistic or have Asperger’s, but they act the same, naive, unable to focus, throwing tantrums, and generally interacting with the world in “innocent” and “unsophisticated” ways. Also, these characters typically have a special “obsessive” interest that they love talking about, some of examples of obsessive fixations are classical music, science, outer space, cartoons, trains, and dinosaurs. It is more harmful when adults are portrayed with this trope, as a person can be an adult with autism, and a mature autistic adult. We often think of neurotypical children as also having obsessive interests or naïve qualities, so the stereotype is not as blatantly discriminatory. Yet, when these are the only traits an autistic character has, that becomes problematic. This child trope creates a stigma of autism disappearing when one turns eighteen, or that people with autism are incapable of mental growth. Some examples of this trope that can be seen in mainstream film, television and book portrayals are Kirk from the television show Gilmore Girls (Palladino, 2000), Lenny from the great American novel Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1965), and Amelie from the French movie Amelie (Jean-Marc, 2001)

Multimedia tropes are not the only case of infantilization of those on the autism spectrum. Most autism-based charities only show children with autism, effectively branding it as a children’s disease and leaving out the reality that many with autism are mature adults. In a study done in 2014, only eight out of 170 autism based charities had pictures that included adults with autism (Stevenson, Harp & Gernsbacher, 2014). When only children with autism are shown, it leaves out adults from the picture. Such absences also contribute to the man-child stereotype. When one only sees children with autism, and then meets adults with autism, they won’t be seen as the adults that they are. Adults with autism then get treated like children. Infantilization ultimately restricts the definition of what a person with autism is like, and the next trope does that as well. 

The next difficult trope is the savant (Draaisma, 2009). The definition of savant is someone who is good at one particular subject, at an almost unnatural level, but that other-worldly savant syndrome seems to come at a price. Characters with autism who fall under this trope are smart beyond their peers, but are depicted as being very rude and as lacking in key social skills. This character trope, like that which focuses on  infantilization, will show people have a special interest, like physics, medicine, drawing, learning languages to name a few examples, which they pursue with genius intensity and knowledge. These characters have friends, but are often depicted as being overly blunt and difficult or not nice to their friends. This kind of portrayal brands people with autism as being bad people and antisocial. Thus, the general public are led to believe that all people with autism must be rude (Safran, 1998). All people with autism are expected to be a know-it-all in one area, but are thought of as idiots if they are not. Some examples of the savant trope are Sherlock from the BBC’s television show Sherlock (Moffat, 2010), Paris from the sitcom Gilmore Girls (Palladino, 2000) and Sheldon Cooper from the tv show the Big Bang Theory (Cendrowski, 2007).

Sometimes, the savant trope is combined with the eternal child trope to create a doubly stereotyped character with autism. Typically these children are beyond their peers, but have trouble making friends, with a tendency to be alienated. An example would be Max from the tv show Parenthood (Holton, 2013). Max enjoys talking about beetles, wearing pirate costumes and he doesn’t like candles. When his parents find out about him being autistic, they resolve not to tell him of his diagnosis. Not telling kids of their diagnosis is bad because the children may be already feeling as if they are an outcast among their peers, but they don’t know why (Sinclair, 1999). Sometimes having information about what makes someone different can provide comfort in challenging situations. Keeping information like that from children with autism does more harm than good. It would deprive an understanding of themselves necessary to overcome their disabilities.

Another autistic stereotype is that autism affects more boys than it does girls (Lai, Lombardo, Auyeung, Chakrabarti, & Baron-Cohen, 2015, pp. 11-24). Most portrayals of autism on television are of males, effectively erasing autistic women from the narrative as well. This erasure actually has an effect on diagnosing autism because many believe that girls do not “get” autism. This also happens on a social level because females do not have the diagnosis that might help them understand their behaviors and social interactions at younger ages. With the bias of being a mostly male disorder, women with autism get diagnosed at a later age than their male counterparts (Bargiela, Steward, & Mandy, 2016). Many autistic women are not diagnosed until adulthood, which can set them back multiple years of working to get help with their disorder. Women being autistic is seen just as much of being an oxymoron as an autistic adult.

Autistic misrepresentation occurs even though characters are not explicitly stated as being autistic. When characters are portrayed with stereotypical autistic traits, they are understood by viewers as being autistic. When people see these traits being portrayed as dislikable, that may cause people to see those traits in a very negative light. This happens even before people with autism have a chance to prove those stereotypes wrong. In short, it doesn’t matter whether the word autism is used. Only the traits matter, not the label. 

How do autistic stereotypes affect people with autism? For starters, when people meet someone who shares traits with a negatively portrayed autistic character, people think that having those traits are linked with being a bad person (Safran, 1998). This leads to isolation, ostracization, and bullying. Stereotyping of any sort can be quite harmful. People will tend to judge all persons with autism they encounter in real life based on the examples they see in media. The general public will see what’s on tv and believe it to be true, even if subconsciously. It predisposes persons to negatively prejudge people with autism before meeting them.

People without autism are also hampered by these stereotypes by causing people with autism to struggle to find their respected and credible voice in social, educational and work settings. Successful interactions with people with autism require an unbiased and accurate understanding of them. These successful interactions are rendered less likely by stereotypical portrayals, which foster disrespect and distrust of people with autism encountered in real life. Everyone should want to treat everyone with respect, and correct their behavior if it is wrong.

People can actively undertake many strategies to make autistic representation more like Julia from Sesame Street, and less like every other character fuelling misunderstanding. The first solution is hiring actual people with autism as consultants for a show (Huws & Jones, 2010, pp. 331-344; Holton, 2013), ensuring the screenwriting matches up with the real experience of autism. Another way is to try to make a multidimensional and meaningful character, not a character who is merely a foil based on comic relief or being a challenge for the other characters. Autistic characters must exist as themselves, not as plot devices for other neurotypical characters.  

Another solution is to approach rectifying harmful stereotypes by using a character to educate non-autistic people about the realities of autism (Behind the Scenes, 2017). Upon seeing a character as a learning opportunity, research is done into the subject, and a more accurate portrayal occurs. People have a tendency to learn from engaging and considering fictional characters. Thus, making one accurate fictional character would do the most good when it comes to opening up people to the nuanced realities of autism spectrum disorder.   

.In conclusion, autistic representation in books, films and televisions shows negatively effects or influences therefore society’s general views of autism. These tropes are discriminatory and harm people with autism by spreading misinformation. There are many years of poor autistic misrepresentation that those in the media industry must work to undo.

References

Bargiela, S., Steward, R., & Mandy, W. (2016). The experiences of late-diagnosed women with autism spectrum conditions: an investigation of the female autism phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(10), 3281-3294.

Baron-Cohen, S., Klin, A., Silberman, S., & Buxbaum, J. D. (2018). Did Hans Asperger actively assist the Nazi euthanasia program? Molecular Autism, 9(1). doi:10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5

 Bringing Julia to Life [Behind the Scenes]. (2017, March 20). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzfHVmSLRU

Cendrowski M (Director). (2007). The Big Bang Theory [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: CBS.

Cohen E (Director). (2017). Sesame Street, season 47 episode 15 [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: PBS

Draaisma D. (2009). Stereotypes of autism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 364(1522), 1475-80. Retrieved from https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2008.0324

Holton, A. E. (2013). What’s wrong with max? Parenthood and the portrayal of Autism Spectrum Disorders 37(1) 45-63. In Sagepub. Retrieved January 29, 2019, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0196859912472507

 Huws, J.C. & Jones, R.S.P (2010) ‘They just seem to live their lives in their own little world’: Lay perceptions of autism, Disability & Society, 25:3, 331-344, DOI: 10.1080/09687591003701231

Jean-Marc D. (Producer), & Jeunet J. (Director). (2001). Amelie [Motion Picture]. France: Canal+.

Lai, M., Lombardo, M. V., Auyeung, B., Chakrabarti, B., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2015). Sex/Gender Differences and Autism: Setting the Scene for Future Research. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 54(1), 11-24. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2014.10.003

Moffat S, (Executive Producer). (2010). Sherlock [Television series]. London, United Kingdom: BBC.

Safran, S. P. (1998). Disability Portrayal in Film: Reflecting the Past, Directing the Future. Exceptional Children, 64(2), 227-238. doi:10.1177/001440299806400206

Steinbeck, J. (1965). Of mice and men: With an introduction. New York: Random House.

Sherman Palladino, A (Director). (2000). Gilmore Girls [Television series]. Los Angeles, California: the WB.

Sinclair, J. (1999). Don't mourn for us. Autistic Rights Movement UK.

[johnnymundano]

The Edge (1997)

Directed by Lee Tamahori

Screenplay by David Mamet

Music by Jerry Goldsmith

Country: United States, Canada

Running Time: 117 minutes

CAST

Bart the Bear as The Killer Kodiak Bear

Anthony Hopkins as Charles Morse

Alec Baldwin as Robert “Bob” Green

Harold Perrineau as Stephen

Elle Macpherson as Mickey Morse

L.Q. Jones as Styles

Kathleen Wilhoite as Ginny

David Lindstedt as James

Mark Kiely as Mechanic

Eli Gabay as Jet Pilot

Larry Musser as Amphibian Pilot

Gordon Tootoosis as Jack Hawk

Kelsa Kinsly as Reporter

It was one of those days; you know the ones - where the only remedy is to watch Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins fight a bear. Luckily Lee Tamahori, David Mamet and Bart the Bear anticipated this need way back in 1997 and made The Edge. In this entertaining wilderness action nonsense a diffident billionaire, Morse (Anthony Hopkins), and a bullish fashion photographer, Bob (Alec Baldwin), are stranded in the Alaskan wilds and have to survive against the odds, said odds including a relentless ursine attacker and their own simmering enmity over Morse’s wife, Mickey (Elle Macpherson). They’ll need each other to survive, but what happens when they no longer need each other? Butch shenanigans in excelsis are in the offing, for sure.

Apparently, The Edge reunited Bart the Bear and Anthony Hopkins, the two having previously worked together on Legends of the Fall (1994); a movie I have never felt the need to watch. But then again I didn’t know Bart the bear was in it. Bart is very much a star in The Edge, easily the equal of the two headliners and he gets a big onscreen shout out at the end, which unfortunately undermines Anthony Hopkins’ portentous final line. I think David Mamet wants us to roll the multi-layered implications of this ambiguous line around our minds like a boiled sweet in a child’s gob, instead you end up going “Bart! The bear was called Bart! Cool. He was good. Man, that bear rocked. Go Bart!”

But the loss of pathos to bathos at the finale is no great loss, as Mamet’s script isn’t one of his stronger ones. It’s very much an “entertainment” as Graham Greene might have had it. It’s not as provocative as Oleanna (1994), but then Oleanna doesn’t have a bear in it, so there you go. Damn, now I really want to watch a production of Oleanna with a bear in it.  

(JOHN: We can only interpret the behaviour of others through the screen we create. 

BART: RRAaauuuugghHHHH! 

JOHN: Agh! My legs! My legs! Oh my God! 

BART: Exactly! 

[Curtain]) 

Nor is The Edge an excoriating portrait of the dog eat dog world of capitalism involving U2’s guitarist selling dodgy real estate. No, the Pulitzer judges can have a lie in; The Edge is just a Boy’s Own adventure, with an extra layer of Mamet’s signature comically excessive manliness. The Edge is so manly there isn’t even a part for Rebecca Pidgeon. However, it’s not all metaphorical whiskey chugging and snapping of towels at each other’s arses in the shower; there’s a woman in glasses who has about two lines and, in a bold casting stroke, the pretty model Elle Macpherson plays a pretty model. Which she is very good at, fair play to Elle Macpherson.

As roles go Macpherson’s is really no more than a fragrant chew toy for the two Alpha males to lock antlers over. The Edge is testosterone laden stuff, as you’d expect from Mamet, but it’s also a bit slack and lazy, which you don’t really expect from him. It’s very much a big budget adventure movie, it feels very much an attempt by Tamahori to atone for the flop of Mulholland Falls (1996). Hey, Hollywood, I can still be trusted to make a movie people will want to see! is pretty much the subtext to every frame of The Edge.  And Tamahori certainly makes a movie worth watching. Savvy enough to take advantage of the quite breath-taking (a cliché; but clichés are clichés for a reason; they are true) landscapes; at once both threatening and bucolic. And the action when it erupts is certainly convincingly pulse accelerating. Hopkins and Baldwin do seem to be in remarkably dangerous proximity to Bart the Bear when he is lunging and roaring at them like a massive, enraged, uh, bear. It’s thrilling stuff; no doubt the result of sharp editing, plucky stunt doubles  and Bart the Bear’s profoundly professional refusal to maim and eat anyone, despite every instinct in him probably urging him to do so. It feels real, in short. Of course it’s an illusion, it’s a movie; but it’s a damn good illusion.

The Edge is very good at creating the illusion that these two dudes are out there alone. Obviously, at all times there would have been a small army of people milling about. With Mr. Baldwin’s latte stirrer and Mr. Hopkins’ nail buffer etc all hovering like midges, to ensure any hardship never exceeded the limits acceptable to millionaires who pretend to be imaginary people for money. It does actually feel like they are stuck out there, dependent on their own meagre resources, whatever they can scrape up from the land and Morse’s learning. Well, for most of the movie it works; as the end nears things get a bit daft. The pair come up with some quite amazing trapping contraptions for a fashion photographer and a billionaire in a non-specific industry; these reach their absurd peak when the fellas are shown wearing home-made clothes fashioned from the pelt of a slain animal. Luckily the actors pick up the slack when all else fails. We’re talking Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin here; if you can’t find entertainment in those two, well,  then that’s why God invented bears.

Anthony Hopkins gives it The Full Hopkins, no doubt inwardly delighted that his older, more sedentary character bests the virile young pretender in almost every scene. Actually, Hopkins’ performance is far better than the movie it inhabits. Yes, he does a bit of face mauling and even that sort of vacant stare thing that he holds just long enough for me to start looking around to find someone who can help him; but, mostly it’s good stuff. There’s actually a distinct arc visible in his character throughout The Edge. Starting off introverted and remote, Morse slowly thaws into someone who appreciates life and can open himself up to people, and all it takes is incredible physical hardship, the death of two people and the realisation his wife is playing away. A small price to pay for a billionaire seeing the sunny side of life. “Never feel sorry for a man who owns a plane.” is repeated several times (just so we don’t miss it), but (SPOILER) it turns out that men who own planes have feelings too. The movie has a few messages, a few too many as these messages kind of trip over each other, but one of the messages is definitely that rich people have feelings too. Boo fucking hoo. Personally, I could give less of a shit about rich peoples’ feelings, but Anthony Hopkins nearly makes me care; he’s that good. Alec Baldwin gets to have more fun as the macho smarm machine angling to replace Morse as Mickey’s favourite bedroom pastime. Charismatically unpleasant as ever, Baldwin tries hard to sell Bob’s later change of nature, but the implacable predictability of the movie works against him.

Because, yes, The Edge is quite a predictable movie, but that isn’t a failure on its part; it seems more than comfortable with that. The Edge is very much at peace with spending quite a lot of time setting up things that will quite blatantly pay off later. The pilot laughingly says he sure hopes they don’t encounter a bird-strike! Do you think they will shortly encounter a bird-strike? Morse has a noggin stuffed with facts purloined from books, but has never been able to put them into practice. Do you think Morse will be able to put some of his book learning into practice over the 117 minute run time? Morse and Bob are initially accompanied by Stephen (Harold Perrineau), who is not Caucasian, is winningly affable and might as well have “Bear Food” and a Use By Date stamped on his forehead. Guess what happens to the luckless Stephen? It is firmly established that a Kodiak bear will never stop killing once it has tasted the flesh of man. Do you think they will encounter a…well, basically, does a bear shit in the woods? Or as bears say, is The Edge a fun chunk of sub-Jack London hokum? Well, yes. Duh. Ask a silly question...But there’s nothing wrong with professionally done fun chunks of hokum. certainly not when you’ve had one of those days.

[nightskywonderer]

Built on Sand Superman/Wonder Woman Accusations (part 2)

Aight....so some are still trying it...

1. It’s toxic/abusive

Obviously this is bullshit but let’s break this down. A toxic relationship is when one partner is emotionally, physically, maybe even psychologically damaging to their partner. When the hell has Clark and Diana ever been “toxic”/abusive toward each other? So basically one of them is a bad character right? That’s essentially what this means. Clark and Diana has always uplifted each other, had each other’s backs. “We are each other’s shelter from the storm.” -Wonder Woman to Superman (Superman/Wonder Woman by Charles Soule & Tony Daniel) Clark and Diana are best friends with a very close bond, built on a solid foundation of love, trust and honesty.

Joker/Harley Quinn is the very definition of a toxic and abusive relationship but is acceptable and romanticized as “Mad Love”.

Being in an abusive relationship is a very serious matter. Assholes using it so freely without true knowledge because they “hate” a ship, is pathetic, childish, and insensitive.

Many many of the Superman/Wonder Woman fans are couples, young, old, married with children, newly engaged, newlyweds, etc... in a very healthy happy relationship which is represented by Superman and Wonder Woman.

2. Shallow/Power Fantasy/Superficial

Superman and Wonder Woman embodies what we strive to be male/female: The best of the best within ourselves. Superman/Wonder Woman is not just about having powers. They both are two humbled people seen as Gods, even if one is a (demi)God, but don’t act like they are Gods.

Superman and Wonder Woman HAS to be with HUMAN love interests, to be accepted. They are heroes only because of those certain human love interest...LOL now who is shallow?

Whats wrong with wanting to be more? Exceed more? Sounds like people who spout this out has such insecurity within themselves. They would rather just settle for less or be basic.

Superman and Wonder Woman are suppose to inspire to strive for more not settle to be less or fit in for insecure human comfort.

Kal and Diana are two beings that felt they couldn’t be completely understood until they met each other.

Together, they can be all of who they are. Diana loves, respects and accepts Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent. Kal gave Diana a sense of normalcy. She didn’t have to Wonder Woman 24/7 nor seen just as a Princess.

“They have matching colors.” Ok and? It’s better than clashing and looking tacky or out of place.

3. patriarchy/racism/sexism/privilege

Patriarchy is males holding primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege. Uhh???? Firstly, repeating, Diana dominates and demands to be equal. Demands the spotlight front and center. Wonder Woman was never depicted as being overshadowed by Superman. Wonder Woman was never shown as a housewife nor a damsel in distress. Superman and Wonder Woman are both the leads. They are EQUAL. They only people who try to down play their equality are some writers who have a problem and are intimidated with balancing the two and are intimidated by Wonder Woman. Which has been admitted.

Being Privileged and Patriotic: Rebirth Superman had 2 issues dedicated to show and glorify how great America is. “Truth, Justice, and the AMERICAN way”. Rebirth Superman is written to be the perfect picture of the perfect all American family that barely struggles and any kind of problem that comes about is fixed easily. He is given stuff on a platter. Newsflash, Superman and Wonder Woman are heroes of the entire WORLD and of all countries. New52 Superman and Wonder Woman was put through “tests”, they were challenged as characters. But that was too much and labeled as too dark and edgy. Real life isn’t sunshine and rainbows.

Kal and Diana have to try to fit in and hide themselves to be accepted by the government and the people who has reservations about the heroes. As seen in new52, even though the “Truth” arc went by the wayside, the premise was how the people and the government would react/turn on Superman and Wonder Woman and the entire Justice League if they knew who they were as civilians.

Superman is an ALIEN who happens to look human. He isn’t a human who happened to get powers.

As a WOC, Kal embracing his Kryptonian heritage as he did in the new52 and didn’t act like it was a burden spoke volumes. Diana celebrated life, was a free spirit, and was so unbothered by petty things. She rejoiced in her Amazonian culture.

4. Superman is seen as a cheater, unfaithful/75-78 years with the same love interest.

First of all it’s a fictional marriage so it’s not that serious. Second, majority of the general public don’t give a damn about comics. Hell they don’t even know the “history” of the character besides the basic surface information. Even more so DC Comics don’t give a damn either because outside of comics they still market Superman/Wonder Woman as a couple.

Clark thought he wasn’t good enough for Diana but he still had feelings for her trying to suppress them. Diana didn’t understand her feelings being young and inexperienced. They mutually decided to be friends, had a very close bond as best friends but still that underlying attraction/sexual tension.

These characters have had relaunches, reboots, changes, there are different interpretations. These characters have existed this long but what happened within those years are a whole other story. New52 Superman was single, pursued Wonder Woman, didn’t wimp out and had a 5 year lasting relationship until he was forcibly killed off. He loved Diana wanted to marry her and Diana wanted superbabies.

“Steven” was NOT a love interest for 30+ years. His character is still struggling for relevance because outside of being a love interest, there is not much interest in his character. That goes for Lois, too. There is a lot of talk but when it comes down to it, these supporting characters/love interest DO NOT get that much support.

There’s no belonging to one person. That doesn’t even happen in reality. Wonder Woman is saddled to belong to the FIRST man she EVER met. LOL no...just no.

5. They don’t sell/ no body likes them

Ok...the correct factual information can be looked up:

New52 Justice League issue 12 sold out, went to 2nd printing, and was named the fastest selling comic ever digitally.

Superman/Wonder Woman 1 debuted with selling over 100k.

The pairing supposedly doesn’t sell yet DC Comics consistently markets them together as a couple with merchandise. There’s a new Superman/Wonder Woman matching couple poncho set recently available at Macy’s.

Wonder Woman’s 75th anniversary earlier this year, the love interest only romantic history actually brought up was with Superman, Superman/Wonder Woman vol. 1 Power Couple was recommended as an essential.

Superman’s 75th anniversary year, Superman/Wonder Woman joint book debuted.

Jim Lee’s “The KISS” statue is very popular.

All in all, DC wants to have their cake and eat it too.

If the traditional love interests/pairings sold there would be more merchandising but for some reason it’s not? Doesn’t make sense when DC is a business that wants money....

If you don’t ship it, fine. But trying to speak for everybody ain’t cool.

This pairing has obviously proven and showed time and time again that despite internet rantings, they are very well liked and very popular.

Over 45.1k followers on Instagram. Over 23k followers on Tumblr. And more on twitter and facebook. Many of the fans/followers are couples, men, women and kids of all ages, ethnicities, orientations.

Everyone has a different preference, no one has to like the same ship, but at least give respect. Pulling BS accusations, labeling people, being bullies is not acceptable. It’s fiction. Too many (grown) people are blowing fuses over juvenile pettiness. I don’t have time for it.

I ship, love and support SuperWonder (Superman & Wonder Woman) point, blank and the period.

[teresatranbooks]

Dear Blog,

Prompt: Write a new blog post with your reaction to the Beuhler chapters that you read for task 3 this week. How does Beuhler's work match with how you view your new role as an English teacher? What experience did you have with YAL in middle or high school? You will go more in depth with Beuhler and YA pedagogy in the fall. 

Beuhler’s Chapters 1 and 2 discuss reading YA books with passion and purpose, and viewing YA literature as complex texts as teachers who will one day teach and share YA books with their students. 

One of Beuhler’s tenets is in order “to learn, grow, and thrive, what all of these students need is...a wide landscape for reading” (Beuhler 3). That is, most students view reading as a chore, because for many of them, it is something they have to do, over something they want to do. It is an assignment. It is an expectation. It is another box they have to check off the list or a line they have to cross of on the agenda. And because they’re required to read mostly classics written by dead old white dudes, they’re “cut off from the larger world of literacy” (Beuhler 3). Because students aren’t directly told or handed diverse reading options, they fall out of love with reading and don’t develop that muscle of reading for later on. That is why many students, my friends, and myself included, over the years, began to repeat the sentiment of “I’m not much of a reader anymore.” It’s depressing!

But as Beuhler states in his chapter, students must be given a balanced reading diet. They need room (specifically time and space) to discover new books written by people who aren’t dead old white dudes. They need motivation to seek out those books. They need to hear from their teachers that them reading for “fun” and as a “hobby’ is not only good for them, but also encouraged in their ELA classroom. There needs to be room for students to develop their own reading tastes and reading stamina, but they can’t do that if they’re not allowed to employ a sense of agency within their choice in books. It is only through this sense of agency and a diverse palette of YA books will students begin to see reading as less of a chore, and more of a fun activity they can’t wait to do. 

This text also made me think about the multiple ways I, as teacher, can do to encourage this love and space for YA literature in the classroom. First, I want to create a space where students who already possess a love for reading YA books outside of the classroom don’t have to steal time to read inside the classroom. In other words, I want my classroom to be a place where students will have a dedicated time to read their contemporary YA titles and keep reading logs about them and talk about them with their peers. I don’t want my students who already consider reading as a hobby to ever feel like they have to sneak around me and the state-mandated curriculum to read their YA books -- and then be afraid I’ll take their books away from them, like the many times teachers did this to me. (I still think about these moments all the time...even in college. I lowkey have some trauma from that LOL).

Second, I want to create whole entire units around YA literature. But this might require going against state standards and school subject departments. So how can I make the case for YA lit in the classroom? Beuhler suggests marketing them as an outlet and/or case study for students’ personal and academic growth. The thing about YA lit is that it is entirely written for them. “YA list offers a way to meet students where they are now -- not just as readers, but as teens who are still figuring out their place in the world...YA lit honors that process of self-discovery” (Beuhler 3). When students read YA lit, they grow as the main characters grow. When students read YA lit, they see their personal journeys and feelings of adolescence (going from young child to young adult) paralleled in heightened and relatable ways. When students see themselves reflected in the literature they read, they end up feeling less alone in the world and develop a sense of community with other students who feel similarly. 

When we think about young adult students, we also think about puberty. We think about the multiple weird strange awful beautiful changes that happen physically, emotionally, mentally, and socially for them. We think about our own experiences during that time and how equally tumultuous it was for us. YA lit offers itself as a space for students and people in general to put their feelings and weirdness somewhere, where it’s private and peaceful and doesn’t make adolescence any more more embarrassing than it already inherently is.

In addition, when students read YA lit, they grow as readers. “If students in our classrooms might not have been readers in the past, but they can become readers now -- if we create conditions that support their individual development” (Beuhler 6). When making the case for YA lit in the classroom, I will emphasize how YA lit creates that confidence within students to believe that reading is something they can do. YA lit inherently has qualities that push students to motivate themselves to continue reading and develop a stronger reading muscle for heavier, longer, and more complex YA texts. YA lit makes reading accessible, breaks down barriers, enhances reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, and promotes a sense of creativity, all of which are qualities state standards try to achieve for students but can’t. 

And third, Beuhler talks about how his favorite YA novels are “those that defy categorization” (Beuhler 27). I think about how not only young teens, but kids and adults and seniors are reading YA lit more and more over other categories. Why? It’s because YA lit does so much at once to fulfill their reading and personal needs. They’re complex and rich and tackle so many relevant themes and experiences, but probably most importantly, they model a development arc that many folks are always secretly seeking. That sort of adventure of becoming into one’s own and developing confidence as a person with better informed opinions and forming new friendships and relationships with people. For kids and teens, it’s the excitement and hopefulness of growing older and breaking away from adult authority and becoming your own person. For adults and seniors, it’s the nostalgia and also hopefulness of returning to what youth was like and experiencing new things again. Because there is so much complexity in YA lit, it will require a complexity when teaching YA lit. 

As a teacher, I want to change the conversation about YA lit, dismantling the idea that it’s a category mainly for teenage girls, which, btw, what the hell is wrong with THAT? So what if it is mainly saturated with stories for and about teenage girls? Most of the books students have had to read have been led by boys and men and written by men -- and students of all genders have had no trouble reading them. But when suddenly girls’ and women’s perspectives are prioritized in narratives, or a category is predominantly centered around the experiences of girls and women, suddenly it’s beneath people and not as complex as other categories? Can someone say SEXISM?. While some people might argue that that is not why they view YA books as not nearly as “complex” as the classics, I think there’s no mistake that gender plays a big part in informing that particular mainstream point of view about YA lit. 

Furthermore, alongside Beuhler, I also believe that “sometimes calls for increasingly complex texts are really code for keeping classic literature at the center of the curriculum” (Beuhler 28). More specifically, I believe that most people’s calls for “complexity” in their reading, what they’re really calling for is either 

(1) books written by dead old white dudes about the American Male ExperienceTM where they find excuses to be racist or sexist or BOTH (fun!) and argue that it’s a relatable part of being an American Man (which ew! and wow, the bar is low), OR 

(2) books written by BIPOC authors that focus on the “Authentic” experience of being BIPOC, but mostly as a vehicle for white folks to fetishize the trauma and pain of BIPOC, without neither the actual empathy and compassion for BIPOC, nor the active commitment to creating systemic and individual change against the trauma and pain that BIPOC often face living under the white capitalist patriarchal police state that these books are often thematically preaching about.

Here’s the thing. YA lit definitely can perpetuate those same harmful practices that the classics often do. In fact, some YA novels already do. I can point to many of the YA Book Twitter drama that rightfully calls out problematic books, such as The Black Witch, on the daily. However, YA lit has shown over and over again that it can reach far beyond its intended target audience and tackle complex themes without infantilizing, again, their intended audience...which is young teens. The thing about literature and education and the passing on of information in general is that if you are an academic or a student or a teacher or an individual and you can not relay your perspective and/or argument in such a way where another person can understand it (even if they might disagree with it)...you have failed. 

YA lit is an example of when perspectives and themes and experiences that are often considered “complex” is successfully communicated to a young teenage audience because of its accessibility. If a classic cannot reach a bigger audience or in this case, reach a young teen demographic, it’s not because of a complexity that YA lit “lacks,” it’s because of the unnecessary, often racist and sexist gatekeeping in classic literature that privileges upper class white folks and their experiences which are often communicated in a language only other upper class white folks can speak and understand. Think about how many classic books are written in AAVE, aka African American Vernacular English? Most people will think of Toni Morrison or James Baldwin...but those are only two Black authors. Two. Out of how many white authors? However, I can think of countless YA lit books written not only in AAVE, but also different Chinese, Spanish, and African dialects by Chinese, Spanish, and African authors. As a teacher, I want to use all of these arguments and evidence I’ve just laid out to argue for the case of YA lit in the classroom. 

I always viewed my role as an English teacher as one with deliberate purpose. I’ve always wanted to be more than just an English teacher. I wanted to be the one person whose students would go to when they finished a book and wanted someone to listen to them rattle off about the parts they liked and didn’t like. I wanted to be the one person whose students would look to when they got bullied by other students or teachers and protect and comfort them, especially my fellow students of color. I wanted to be the one person whose students would ask for book recommendations and ask to read over their writing projects because they trusted my opinions. I wanted to be the person I needed when I was younger. If I can’t go back in time to the past, I’ll make sure I become that person in the present for the kids of the future generation...

And I’ll start with introducing them to YA lit.

[garp19-jennicornall-blog]

Research proposal statement

Why do we tell stories to children? The importance of children’s books and how to keep them relevant.  

I have always loved books ever since I can remember. I have so many memories of my parents reading to me and putting on silly voices. The beautiful illustrations transported me to a different world allowing me to believe that I could be or do whatever I wanted. A world where animals wear waistcoats, twits played tricks, shooting stars, Scottish landscapes, naughty siblings and families with weird and wonderful pet animals. I learnt so much from these stories, they helped me get through bad times and made me learn about myself and the world around me. For instance, books from the likes of Beatrix Potter, Mairi Hedderwick, Julia Donaldson, Raymond Briggs. I have been interested in the children book industry for a while and thought this would be a perfect opportunity for me to learn more about it. Looking at the children book industry will help my personal practice, informing me how it works, and how it can relate to the position I am in. I will be looking into the origin of reading and children’s books by looking into folklore and how it shaped the industry that is today from the likes of Vladimir Propp. I will be looking at why its important children read and how we can encourage reading to be a part of a child’s routine. I will be going to local independent children’s bookshops to see how they encourage children to read and to look at their displays and workshops. I will look at the publishing industry and their policy on ethics over profits. I will also be looking at trends in books, to see what people are buying and why. I think this would be interesting to see the variety of books that exist and how it is evolving. For example for International Women’s Day the increase in books about strong female leads. Have they been there all the time or hidden at the back of the shelves? I also will be looking at illustrators and how children’s illustrations have changed with the use of digital illustration alongside traditional. This will be of interest to teachers, parents and people who want to get into the industry. This will help them understand how books and illustrations are still important and how they can be kept that way. They can see modern books that are on offer that can teach their children about our growing world and promoting equality.

Children are introduced to new worlds with books, they can meet new people from the present and past and they can really affect their lives. It sparks their imagination, develops thought provoking and critical thinking and helps them develop empathy. Reading allows children to have skills they will need for their future to help them thrive at school, work and life. (Cowell, 2018) Reading for pleasure is also important for mental health as well as economic success research states. ‘One in eight disadvantaged children in the UK do not own a single book of their own, and primary school libraries have closed across the nation.’ Another factor for why children are not reading is because of parents not having time to read with their child. ‘19% of parents struggle to find energy at the end of the day’ also 16% said their child prefers to do other things. Another struggle some parents find is not feeling comfortable in bookshops, with feeling overwhelmed by the variety of books. However, 61% of parents are concerned about how much screen time children are having. (Flood, 2018)

An interview between Quentin Blake and Lauren Child shows the way they draw and write for both adults and children. Child says how she treasures Blake’s comment about how young children can read a book even if they can’t actually read. ‘Whether I’m doing an adult book for The Folio Society or a book for a five- year old, it’s the same job and you should take it equally seriously.’ Child wants to address a similar method by speaking to both adults and children. ‘I think there is a misunderstanding about writers and illustrator for children. As if they don’t take their work as seriously as those who write and illustrate for adults. When actually it’s the same, the same thought process and integrity. It’s easy to feel you are there to be some kind of children’s entertainer at festivals for example.’ (Williams, 2017) The world of picture books owes much to John Burningham. His ‘visual poetry’ pushed boundaries of how much can be left unsaid. ‘He always treated the reader’s imagination with the utmost respect, whatever the reader’s age might be.’ He was able to communicate to children in their language ‘and in his understand of the mutually exclusive worlds of childhood and adulthood. (Salisbury, 2019)

During my research I am planning to look at themes in children’s books, looking at trends in books and why. I have broadly looked into how children’s books help and teach children about ‘difficult issues.’ Difficult meaning the effort to be able to deal and understand. (Dictionary, 2019) I have investigated why books like this need to exist for children and how it can help them. ‘All children deserve to be listened to: to have the chance to talk about their worst fears, their hopes and their dreams. (Edge, 2015) I have also explored what is suitable for children. How far can children’s books push the boundaries of what children should know and in what way. (Styles, 2012) I then started to investigate different topics that could be considered as ‘difficult’ or ‘taboo’; Such as equality, LGBT, death, illness, elderly, family and love.

In the lead up to international women’s day, I found lots of displays and books about women. I started to do research into equality, and how it’s presented in children’s books. Still in todays modern world, when an author reveals the gender of a creature it was 73% more likely to be male than female. Male creatures are also more likely to be shown as strong and dangerous and compared to animals like tigers and dragons. Whereas women are shown as more small and sensitive creatures such as birds and butterflies. Although there are new picture books with strong female characters, they didn’t make the bestseller list. However, illustrators and authors understand the importance of equality and it is slowly changing. However, parents are still buying books they know and trust from their childhood. Which aren’t perhaps promoting equality. (Ferguson, 2018)

I found a project called ‘No Outsiders’ in which UK primary schoolteachers looked at ways of addressing sexual equality in primary schools. It’s important to get the balance into how to educate children about sexuality for them to understand that everyone is different. The idea of the project was to prevent homophobia. In order to do this it would require talking about gender, sexuality and diversity openly in school. However, there was parents who protested against this causing a school to temporarily withdraw from the project. The aim of this project was to reduce bullying, which parents (Love, 2019)  supported. However they were saying ‘our child is coming home and talking about same- sex relationships when we haven’t even talked about heterosexual relationships with them yet.’ A woman said that her 10 year old daughter came home from school after reading a couple of these books and said ‘We can’t have these books in the house, people might think we’re gay or something.’ The woman then stated how she realized in that moment that her daughter was already being ‘bombarded with peer pressure.’ ‘She had already realized and made her mind up that gay is bad and we can’t go there. If at this age they’re already saying that we can’t accept people for their life choices, then we have to start educating them earlier.’ A project teacher gave her own interpretation of homosexuality and did a story called ‘If I had 100 mummies.’ A girl responded by putting her hand up and said she had two mummies. ‘We framed it that she is the luckiest one to have two mummies, because we’d all like 100 kisses at bedtime and 100 ice creams if we went out to play.’ This empowered the child’s parents, as they came in and said how pleased they were that this was being addressed and their situation being framed as the norm. (DePalma, 2016)

Another aspect I have researched is about illustrators and how they are treated in the industry. This is something I want to look more into especially for children’s illustrators. An illustrator surveyed 1261 illustrators about their pay, workload and contracts. He found that most illustrators are based at home while only 11% share studios. Illustrators found that the most work they got was from the publishing industry with 24% and editorial work with 19%, closely followed by prints and exhibitions at 18% and 16% from advertising. Most of their work came from self-promotion 33% and repeat clients 30%. Social media is a big impact with it helping 21% of the illustrators, agents however only bringing 9%. Instagram was the most important social media source for those surveyed. It is an easy way for illustrators to get their work out there and for a large amount of people to see at a click of a finger. However there is still some way to go. 69% felt they could not earn a suitable amount to live sustainably just from illustration and have had to have side jobs. (Brewer, 2018)

The children book industry is a big area to research. I want to find out things that are going to be relevant to my practice and potential future in the industry. I want to look at illustrators and how they’ve entered the industry. I will be doing research into whether they have an agent or if they are freelance. Comparing this to international illustrators such as Sweden and Norway who have wages whereas many illustrators in the UK tend to work freelance. Why is this? How do freelance illustrators find work? I want to look into whether having an agent is needed and look at well-known illustrators and their journey in children’s books. I am planning to look at different agents and their clients seeing how successful they have been. Has social media been a big impact on the illustration industry? How has it helped illustrators and impacted their lives mentally. I also would like to look into techniques illustrators use. Looking at traditional illustration such as Beatrix Potter compared to digital illustration such as Jim Field who uses digital techniques in his work. Is the change with advanced technology good for the industry or bad? Why do people choose to draw digitally and does it have the same effect as using traditional methods.

Another area to look into would be in the publishing industry. Looking at the type of books they sell and what they promote, for example around international women’s day there were displays in every bookshop and in chains such as Waterstones. Yet where are these books on a normal day? I want to look further into who decides the market focus is right and how can it be changed to promote equality and issues such as LGBT, race, diversity and so on. Another research point would be to look at certain publishing houses such as Penguin, reviewing the books they have on offer for children, I want to see the trends in books they sell and doing an analysis on what’s popular and why. It might also be interesting looking at the type of books children read at school and how they involve books in education. Another area I want to look in is the increase in EBooks and Audio books. With the increase in young children using tablets are they likely to use these than read an actual book or be read to. What is this doing to children, what are the benefits?

I have found some books that I feel will be helpful for my research and the understanding of the children book industry. For instance How to be an Illustrator by Darrel Rees. I have already read some of this book before but I think it will give me a good insight into the illustration industry. Other books I am planning on reading are: Illustration: What’s the point? By Mouni Feddag and Becoming a Successful Illustrator by Derek Brazell. Books that are more specific to the children’s book industry are: How to Write a Children’s Picture Book and Get it Published by Andrea Shavick; Illustrating Children’s Books- Creating Pictures for Publication by Martin Salinsbury; Drawn from the Archive: Hidden Histories of Illustration by Seven stories Press; Little Big Books: Illustration for Children's Picture Books by Robert Klanten and 100 Great Children's Picture books by Martin Salisbury and Illustrating Children's books by Martin Ursell.

I am planning on doing some primary research over the holidays. I have a few ideas of what I could possibly do, but this will likely change once I have done more research on my subject. Also the type of questions and focus may change slightly with more knowledge and understanding of my subject. One idea I had would be doing an interview with an independent children’s bookshop owner. I am planning to visit some over the summer and there is a few local book shops dedicated to just children’s novels. I would want to ask the owner about their opinion on the industry, to find out are people still buying books like they used to. Do they hold any workshops, book readings/ signings, if so do many people attend? I would ask about their ethics over profits and the type of books they sell and why. Another possibility would be to do an online questionnaire asking friends and family about their experience with children’s books. Over the summer I want to visit as many independent book shops as I can. While doing some research I discovered some local ones The Childrens Bookshop in Hay- On- Wye and Booka Bookshop in Oswestry. I am also hoping to go to London and bookshops I would like to go to are Chiltern Bookshops in Gerrad’s Cross, Foyes in Charing Cross, The Owl Bookshop Kentish Town, Kew Bookshop, London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury and Daunt Books in Marylebone. I would also like to go in some museums and galleries such as The Cartoon Museum, The House of Illustration, House of MinaLima, Chris Beetles Gallery and Marianne North Gallery in Kew gardens.

References

Ben_the_illustrator. (2018/2019) Illustrator's Survey [online] Available at: https://bentheillustrator.com/illustrators-survey [Accessed: 15/04/19]

Brewer, J. (2018) This illustrator surveyed 1261 illustrators about pay, workload, clients, contracts and more [online] Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/ben-the-illustrator-illustration-survey-2017-160118 [Accessed: 19/04/19]

Briggs, R. (1994) The Bear [online] Available at: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/299935/the-bear/9780141374079.html [Accessed: 25/04/19]

Cowell, C. (2018) If we want our children to thrive, teaching them to read is not enough – they must learn to enjoy it.  [online], Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/children-reading-for-pleasure-learning-to-read-a8666611.html [Accessed: 16/02/18]

DePalma, R. (2016) Gay Penguins, Sissy Ducklings ... and Beyond? Exploring Gender and Sexuality Diversity through Children's Literature. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37 (6), 828-845.

Dictionary, O. (2019) Difficult [online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/difficult [Accessed: 01/04/19]

Edge, C. (2015) How Can Stories Help Children Explore Difficult Subjects? [online] Available at: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/blog/teachers-librarians/2015/11/how-can-stories-help-children-explore-difficult-subjects [Accessed: 25/02/19]

Ferguson, D. (2018) Must monsters always be male? Huge gender bias revealed in children’s books.  [online], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/21/childrens-books-sexism-monster-in-your-kids-book-is-male [Accessed: 07/03/19]

Flood, A. (2018) Only half of pre-school children being read to daily, UK study finds.  [online], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/21/only-half-of-pre-school-children-being-read-to-daily-study-finds [Accessed: 18/04/19]

Hedderwick, M. (1986) Katie Morag And The Tiresome Ted [online] Available at: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1000937/katie-morag-and-the-tiresome-ted/9781849410953.html

Love, J. (2019) Julián Is a Mermaid [online] Available at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/567578/julian-is-a-mermaid-by-jessica-love/9780763690458/ [Accessed: 26/03/19]

McKee, D. (1968) Elmer [online] Available at: https://www.waterstones.com/book/elmer/david-mckee/9781842707319 [Accessed: 25/04/19]

Potter, B. About Beatrix Potter [online] Available at: https://www.peterrabbit.com/about-beatrix-potter/ [Accessed: 25/04/19]

Salisbury, M. (2019) John Burningham Obituary [online], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/07/john-burningham-obituary [Accessed: 18/04/19]

Sethi, A. (2018) Browse a bookshop: Moon Lane Books, south London.  [online], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/07/browse-a-bookshop-moon-lane-books-london [Accessed: 20/04/19]

Styles, M.S.a.M. (2012) Children's Picturebooks The art of visual storytelling. London: Laurence King.

Williams, S. (2017) 'Drawing is the most important thing there is': Quentin Blake talks to Lauren Child.  [online], Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/drawing-important-thing-quentin-blake-talks-lauren-child/ [Accessed: 18/02/19]

Youtube. (2011) Ladybird Classic Me Books App | Interactive Picture Book [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h1EYwDg8lU [Accessed: 15/04/19]

[nightingveilxo]

Sherlock Is Not A Machine or Monster, The Glass Not Being An Impediment At First (But Will Be Later), and How Sebastian Wilkes Is Partially Eurus

TBB

In the supermarket, John has at last got everything scanned and has inserted his credit or debit card into the chip-and-PIN machine. He types in his PIN and waits. AUTOMATED VOICE: Card not authorised. Please use an alternative method of payment. JOHN: Yes, all right! I’ve got it! AUTOMATED VOICE: Card not authorised. Please use an alternative method of payment. (The man in the queue behind him has already picked up his own basket in expectation of getting to the scanner soon. John reaches towards his back pocket but apparently realises that he has no other way of paying.) JOHN: Got nothing. (He points at the machine.) JOHN: Right, keep it. Keep that. (As the man behind him looks on in surprise, John angrily walks away, abandoning his shopping and quite possibly his card as well.) ( x )

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK (not looking up): You took your time. JOHN: Yeah, I didn’t get the shopping. SHERLOCK (looking indignantly over the top of his book): What? Why not? JOHN (tetchily): Because I had a row, in the shop, with a chip-and-PIN machine. SHERLOCK (lowering his book a little): You ... you had a row with a machine? [It won’t be the last time that John argues with a ‘machine,’ Sherlock baby, but let’s not go there right now ...] JOHN: Sort of. It sat there and I shouted abuse. Have you got cash? (Sherlock holds back his amused smile and nods towards the kitchen.) SHERLOCK: Take my card. (John walks towards the kitchen where Sherlock’s wallet is lying on the table, but before he gets there he turns back to his flatmate indignantly.) JOHN: You could always go yourself, you know. You’ve been sitting there all morning. You’ve not even moved since I left. (Sherlock briefly flashes back in his mind to a moment in the fight when he ducked under a swing from the attacker’s sword. [And oh my goodness can you see how the blade cuts right into The Coat hanging on the back of the door?! *cries*] He tries to look nonchalant as he turns the page of his book while John picks up the wallet from the table and rummages through it for a suitable payment card.) JOHN: And what happened about that case you were offered – the Jaria Diamond? SHERLOCK: Not interested. (Just as he won’t be interested in The Black Pearl of the Borgias, until AGRA is involved.) (Using a piece of paper as a bookmark he shuts the book with a loud snap, and only then realises that the attacker’s sword is still lying underneath his chair in plain view. He quickly slams a foot down onto the end and slides his foot and the sword further back to get the weapon out of sight.) SHERLOCK (firmly): I sent them a message. (Flashback to his uppercut that ended the fight.) (John has now found a card he can use, but pauses to bend over to look more closely at the new long narrow gouge in the top of the table. He sighs and runs his finger along the cut, rubbing at it in case it’s just a mark that can be removed.) JOHN (in an exasperated whisper): Ugh, Holmes. (Looking across to his flatmate, he tuts pointedly. Sherlock shakes his head innocently. John turns and leaves the room, trotting down the stairs as Sherlock smirks.)

Fast forward...

Wind & Blue Clothing Before Mycroft’s East Wind or S4

SHERLOCK: So, you’re doing well. You’ve been abroad a lot. SEBASTIAN: Well, some. SHERLOCK: Flying all the way round the world twice in a month? (Mary?) (John frowns in confusion but Sebastian just laughs and points at Sherlock.) SEBASTIAN: Right. You’re doing that thing. (He looks at John.) SEBASTIAN: We were at uni together. This guy here had a trick he used to do. (In ACD’s The Adventure of the Gloria Scott, Victor Trevor was Sherlock’s friend from university, the skip code from TEH pulled from that story, and the characters in S4 are adapted to be likes one in TAotGS, especially Molly.) SHERLOCK (quietly): It’s not a trick. (TLD: It’s a plan.) SEBASTIAN (to John): He could look at you and tell you your whole life story. JOHN: Yes, I’ve seen him do it. SEBASTIAN: Put the wind up everybody. We hated him. (Sherlock turns his head away and looks down, his face momentarily filling with pain.)

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK: I was just chatting with your secretary outside. She told me. (John frowns round at him, confused by such an ‘ordinary’ explanation. Sebastian laughs humourlessly and Sherlock smiles back at him with an equal lack of humour. Sebastian claps his hands together, then becomes more serious.) (Mary will tell you receptionists know everything.) SEBASTIAN: I’m glad you could make it over. We’ve had a break-in. (He leads them across the trading floor towards another door.) SEBASTIAN: Sir William’s office – the bank’s former Chairman. The room’s been left here like a sort of memorial. Someone broke in late last night. JOHN: What did they steal? SEBASTIAN: Nothing. Just left a little message. ( x )

Sherlock’s Reaction

Remember, Nothing is important from TSoT and TAB, Sherlock is not a machine, and Molly is wrong--but John isn’t. ( x )

TAB

HOLMES: Well, exactly. WATSON: No, those are my words, not yours!  That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine.  I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it. HOLMES: Well, I’ve a good mind to write to your editor. WATSON: You are a living, breathing man.  You’ve lived a life; you have a past.

T6T

MOLLY: No idea why people think you’re incapable of human emotion. *sarcasm* (Mrs Hudson clears her throat pointedly.) MOLLY (quietly): Sorry.  (She nods her head down to Sherlock’s hands and still speaks quietly.)  Phone. (Sherlock lowers the phone and puts his hands behind his back.  The vicar is now holding Rosamund, who is grizzling.) VICAR: And now, godparents ... (Behind his back, Sherlock is continuing to type.) (How very Irene of him...) VICAR ... are you ready to help the parents of this child in their duties as Christian parents? MOLLY and MRS HUDSON (simultaneously): We are. (Molly looks across to Sherlock and elbows him. Behind his back, a male SIRI voice speaks from his phone.) SIRI: Sorry, I didn’t catch that.  (TBB: Please use an alternative form of payment.) (Stella and Ted make disapproving noises. John closes his eyes and Mary narrows her eyes at Sherlock.) SIRI (beeping): Please repeat the question. (TBB: Please use an alternative form of payment.)

Rewind to TBB

&: The ampersand often appeared as a letter at the end of the Latin alphabet. Similarly, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet. The ampersand is also often shown as a backwards 3 with a vertical line above and below it or a dot above and below it.

When Sherlock Gets Too Close to the Glass, and John Reflects

TRF

SHERLOCK: Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty. (He looks around briefly at his enemy’s grinning body lying behind him. On the ground, John stares up at his friend in disbelief.) JOHN: Why are you saying this? (Sherlock turns back to look down at him. His voice breaks.) SHERLOCK: I’m a fake. JOHN: Sherlock ... SHERLOCK (his voice becoming tearful): The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs Hudson, and Molly ... in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes. JOHN: Okay, shut up, Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met ... the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right? SHERLOCK: Nobody could be that clever. JOHN: You could. (Sherlock laughs and gazes down at his friend, a tear dripping from his chin.) SHERLOCK: I researched you. Before we met I discovered everything that I could to impress you. (He sniffs quietly.) It’s a trick. Just a magic trick. (John has his eyes closed and is shaking his head repeatedly.) JOHN: No. All right, stop it now. (He starts to walk towards the hospital entrance.) SHERLOCK (urgently): No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move. (John stops and backs up, holding up his hand towards Sherlock in capitulation.) JOHN: All right. (Breathing rapidly, Sherlock has his own hand stretched out towards his friend.) SHERLOCK: Keep your eyes fixed on me. (His voice becomes frantic.) Please, will you do this for me? JOHN: Do what? SHERLOCK: This phone call – it’s, er ... it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they – leave a note? (John shakes his head, momentarily taking his phone from his ear as the stress of what he’s beginning to understand hits him, then he raises it again, his voice shaky.) JOHN: Leave a note when? ( x )

TEH

1:29 (John turns back towards him, and Sherlock raises his head.) SHERLOCK (softly): I’m sorry. (John screws his eyes closed for a moment, then looks at him again.) JOHN: What? SHERLOCK (softly, his eyes starting to fill with tears): I can’t ... I can’t do it, John.  I don’t know how. (He straightens up on his knees.) SHERLOCK: Forgive me? JOHN (tightly, furiously): What?   SHERLOCK (bringing his hands up into a praying position): Please, John, forgive me ... for all the hurt that I caused you. JOHN (waving a finger at him): No, no, no, no, no, no.  This is a trick. SHERLOCK: No. JOHN: Another one of your bloody tricks. SHERLOCK: No. JOHN: You’re just trying to make me say something nice. (Sherlock chuckles briefly.) SHERLOCK: Not this time. JOHN: It’s just to make you look good even though you behaved like ... (He grimaces, fighting back tears, and turns away as he tries to steady his breathing.  Sherlock moves away from the bomb and sits on the edge of one of the nearby seats.  John grips one of the handrails, looking down at the floor, then stamps his foot furiously.  His voice is low but savage when he speaks.) JOHN: I wanted you not to be dead. SHERLOCK: Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for.

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK: The criminal network Moriarty headed was vast. (Cutaway shot of Sherlock standing beside Mycroft as he sits in his office in the Diogenes Club.  Mycroft appears to be reading a report; Sherlock is looking at his phone.) SHERLOCK (voiceover): Its roots were everywhere like a cancer, so we came up with a plan.

Fast forward...

LAZARUS IS GO John gets out of the taxi and heads towards the hospital, taking Sherlock’s phone call as he goes.  Unseen by John – whose view is blocked by the ambulance station – the truck full of rubbish bags is in position by the bus stop, several people are waiting by the wall of the ambulance station, and the airbag is inflating at the other side of the station.) SHERLOCK (over phone): It’s a trick.  Just a magic trick. JOHN (into phone): All right, stop it now. SHERLOCK: No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move.

T6T

WATSON HOME.  Apparently Sherlock has knocked on the door and then stepped back out of the porch.  The door opens and Molly comes out, holding Rosie in her arms.  She closes the door and comes out to the porch. Sherlock smiles down at his goddaughter. MOLLY (softly): Hi. (He nods to her.  She returns the nod.) SHERLOCK (quietly): I just ... wondered how things were going and ... and if there was anything I could do. (Looking awkward, Molly reaches into the pocket of her trousers and then holds out an envelope.) MOLLY: It’s, uh, it’s from John. SHERLOCK (taking it and looking down at it): Right. MOLLY: You don’t need to read it now. (She pauses for a moment as he looks at her.) MOLLY: I’m sorry, Sherlock.  He says ... Jo-John said if you were to come round asking after him, offering to help ... SHERLOCK: Yes? MOLLY (reluctantly): He ... said he’d r... that he’d rather have anyone but you. (Softly) Anyone. (Anyone is also important.) (Sherlock blinks and presses his lips together.  Molly, with tears in her eyes, looks down at Rosie and then turns and goes back indoors, closing the door behind her.  Sherlock stands there for a few seconds, then turns and walks away, tucking the envelope into his coat pocket.) MARY (voiceover): I’m giving you a case, Sherlock. (Sherlock sits in the back of a black cab, his head lowered.  It’s possible that he’s looking at whatever was inside the envelope.) MARY (voiceover): When I’m gone – if I’m ... (she breathes out a shaky breath) ... gone – I need you to do something for me. [That sentence does sound different this second time.] (On the DVD recording, the camera focuses in on Mary’s mouth.) ( x )

TLD

JOHN (to Molly): I thought this was some kind of ... SHERLOCK: What? JOHN (turning to him): ... trick. SHERLOCK: ’Course it’s not a trick.  It’s a plan. SMITH (offscreen): Mr Holmes! (John looks past Sherlock’s shoulder to where the voice came from.  Smith is coming out of the doors of a building marked VILLAGE STUDIOS.  Cornelia is behind him and a man walks alongside filming him as more people come out of the doors behind them.) SHERLOCK (quick fire, not turning round): Thirty feet and closing: the most significant undetected serial killer in British criminal history. (Smiling, Smith walks towards them followed by his entourage.) SHERLOCK (to John): Help me bring him down. JOHN: What ... what plan? SHERLOCK: I’m not telling you. JOHN: Why not? SHERLOCK: Because you won’t like it. ( x )

Fast forward...

THERAPIST: Culverton gave me Faith’s original note.  (She stands up.)  A mutual friend put us in touch. (She walks across to the French windows and turns the key in the lock of the door, removing the key afterwards before turning back.  As she continues talking, her accent slips even more, sometimes sounding German and sometimes veering more towards an English accent.) THERAPIST: Did Sherlock ever tell you about the note? ( x )

And here is what Sherlock thinks John believes him to be...A monster.

TFP

SHERLOCK: Conclusion three: you are terrified of her! MYCROFT (sternly): You have no idea what you’re dealing with.  (Angrily) None at all. JOHN (coming out of a corridor on the ground floor): New information: she’s out. MYCROFT: That’s not possible. SHERLOCK: It’s more than possible.  She was John’s therapist. JOHN: Shot me during a session. SHERLOCK: Only with a tranquilliser. JOHN: Mm.  We still had ten minutes to go. SHERLOCK: Well, we’ll see about a refund. (John smiles.  Sherlock starts coming down the stairs and addresses his actors.) SHERLOCK: Right, you two. Wiggins has got your money by the gate.

Fast forward...

SHERLOCK (shifting slightly to face his brother): I don’t know and I don’t care.  So there were three of us.  I know that now.  You, me, and ... Eurus. (Mycroft nods.) SHERLOCK: A sister I can’t remember.  Interesting name, Eurus.  It’s Greek, isn’t it? JOHN (looking at his notebook, clearly reading notes he has already made): Mm.  Yeah, uh, literally ‘the god of the East Wind.’ (Not goddess.) MYCROFT: Yes. SHERLOCK (gazing towards the floor): “The East Wind is coming, Sherlock.”  (He looks at his brother.)  You used that to scare me. MYCROFT: No. SHERLOCK: You turned my sister into a ghost story. MYCROFT: Of course I didn’t.  I monitored you. JOHN: You what? MYCROFT (looking at him): Memories can resurface; wounds can re-open.  The roads we walk have demons beneath ... (he turns his gaze to Sherlock) ... and yours have been waiting for a very long time.  I never bullied you.  I used – at discrete intervals – potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition.  I was looking after you. SHERLOCK (softly, intensely): Why can’t I remember her? (Mycroft pauses for a moment, glancing in John’s direction but not looking at him.) MYCROFT: This is a private matter. (Keep it behind glass.) SHERLOCK: John stays. (John had been about to get up but now looks across to Sherlock, surprised.  Mycroft leans forward in his chair.) MYCROFT (in a harsh whisper): This is family. SHERLOCK (loudly, firmly): That’s why he stays. (The brothers lock eyes for a long moment.  John smiles and lowers his head.  Eventually Mycroft sits back.  John clears his throat.) JOHN: So there were three Holmes kids. (He pulls the lid off his pen and re-opens his notebook.) JOHN: What was the age gap? MYCROFT: Seven years between myself and Sherlock; one year between Sherlock and Eurus. (John nods and points his pen in Sherlock’s direction.) JOHN: Middle child.  Explains a lot. (Sherlock throws him a look.  John raises his eyebrows at him and then turns his attention back to his notebook.) JOHN (to Mycroft): So did she have it too? MYCROFT: Have what? JOHN: The deduction thing. MYCROFT (sarcastically): “The deduction thing”? JOHN (after a moment): ... Yes.

Maintain a distance of (&) 3 feet.

The Murderous Ghost Before TAB

Hypnosis, Reflections, and Circles That Seem Like /Time/Loops ( x )

There are other instances of Sherlock being compared to a machine, but I figured I used enough to make the point.

@swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool @darlingtonsubstitution @may-shepard @sherlockians-get-bored @monikakrasnorada @gosherlocked

[kristablogs]

Anti-Black bias affects just about everyone. What’s the best way to deal with implicit racism?

Anti-Black bias can even shared by Black people. (Clay Banks via Unsplash/)

In a world where many people actively work to fight against systemic racism and even more claim to be “woke,” the science of implicit bias reveals why most of us still have work to do. Implicit biases are like puppeteers lurking inside our heads, coloring our every action with unconscious stereotyping and prejudice.

Humans begin forming simple mental links in infancy: We learn to associate highchairs with mealtime, parents with comfort, and cribs with naps. Data streams at us from all directions—news reports, television shows, family chats, friendly gossip—and we absorb it all. But this unconscious practice of grouping different words and objects gets more complex as we grow up, and it gives rise to insidious racial biases. Because many of the world’s sources of stimuli, especially television news reports, present Black people as criminals or threatening characters, our brains naturally begin to make an all-too-common connection—Black people and danger go together.

These biases quietly and unconsciously influence our actions throughout our lives, even as some of us actively protest against racism and discrimination. Implicit biases can be just as dangerous as consciously, actively demonstrated acts of racism, such as using slurs or attacking Black people, and they’re much more insidious. In a chilling 2002 study, randomly selected participants played a video game that featured photographs of white and Black individuals holding either a gun or another object (a wallet, soda can, or cell phone). Subjects were told to decide, as quickly as possible, whether or not to shoot the character. Consistent with earlier studies, nearly everyone made the “correct” decision to shoot at an armed Black individual more often than a white individual.

Various studies, including one conducted in 2018, confirm that Black people carry the same bias. Subjects identified dangerous objects, such as guns, much faster after viewing a Black face compared to a face with both Black and white features. These snappy, adrenaline-driven responses arise from reflexive, unconscious thought processes rather than deliberate, careful reflections.

Implicit biases can weigh BIPOC down every day—and destroy their lives in an instant. Researchers are working to understand how these insidious stereotypes drive our behavior, and how we might learn to shake them off.

The origins of implicit bias

We can trace the origins of implicit bias—or at least our cultural awareness of it—back to a thick manila envelope sitting in a P.O. Box in New Haven in 1990. Mahzarin Banaji, then a graduate student in psychology at Yale University, had always been fascinated by the idea of implicit memory—past experiences that we’re not consciously aware of, but that still manage to control our actions. When Banaji came across famous cognitive psychologist Larry Jacoby’s study on the subject, she decided to replicate the experiments for herself.

The simple and elegant study, “Becoming Famous Overnight,” was published in 1989. First, the subject reads through a list of names pulled from a phone book, such as Sebastian Weisdorf—these names are designated as “old not-famous.” The next day, the subject goes through a new list with three types of names: the old not-famous names, new not-famous names (like Andrew Ringren), and famous names (like Wayne Gretzky, a then-well-known hockey player from Canada). The subject then sorts the names into two piles—famous and not-famous. Sorting errors arose almost exclusively from old not-famous names, which subjects mistakenly sorted into the famous pile, thus confirming Jacoby’s hypothesis of implicit memory. Memories have a texture to them, and the inexplicable familiarity of the name Sebastian Weisdorf caused confusion, guiding subjects to mark them as belonging to celebrities.

A year after the study’s publication, Banaji wrote a postcard to Jacoby asking for the data, and soon enough, a manila envelope appeared in her mailbox. When she rifled through the pages, she found something puzzling—all the names were male. Banaji repeated the experiment using a mix of names and discovered that non-famous females didn’t tend to follow Jacoby’s hypothesis: Sally Weisdorf didn’t become famous overnight like Sebastian Weisdorf did.

Banaji began chatting with subjects after the tests were finished, asking them if they considered gender while sorting. Had they been making the conscious decision that vaguely familiar men were more likely to be celebrities than vaguely familiar women were? Each insisted that sexism had nothing to do with their selection process. “There was a complete lack of awareness that they were relying on gender,” Banaji says. “That was the moment for me when the light bulb went off.”

Perhaps, she thought, this unconscious reaction could help us understand the nuances of how the human mind categorizes the world.

In the next few years, Banaji and two other researchers at Yale, Tony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, banded together to develop a series of tests to measure what they began to call implicit social cognition, something that deeply impacts our social attitudes, behavior, and perceptions. The Implicit Attitude Tests, or IATs, were first published on Yale’s website in September 1988, and measure the strength of associations between different concepts (black faces, white faces) and evaluations (good, bad) by asking the user to categorize certain words and images, and measuring the response time for users to group certain stimuli together. The test went viral, especially after it was featured on Oprah. The researchers ended the month with 45,000 results to parse through.

Over time, Banaji and her team created variations of the original IAT, including tests that measure bias against disabilities, sexuality, certain ethnicities, weight, gender, skin tone, and much more. The true value of the test, however, lies in the two-decade aggregation of implicit bias data, which has proven to be a goldmine for psychologists studying this phenomenon. By tracing the arc of these scores over time, especially during the Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ movements, scientists are attempting to crack open the phenomenon—and find out how to fix it.

Seeing and participating in rallies can help shift implicit bias. (Unsplash/)

Mass movements can shift biases—slowly

In a 2018 study, Jeremy Sawyer, a professor of behavioral science at Kingsborough Community College, looked at implicit bias data collected from 2009 to 2016. He wanted to see how results had changed during Barack Obama’s presidency, and the rise of Black Lives Matter after the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Many had hoped that anti-Black racism would decrease with Obama’s inauguration. Previous studies had indicated that bias decreases momentarily after subjects are shown images of highly respected Black figures such as Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. But Sawyer found that at a society-wide level, the exact opposite occurred: From 2009 to 2013, anti-Black bias slightly increased among white and Black populations.

The trend only started to reverse when the Black Lives Matter movement arose in 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Sawyer and his co-authors took this as a sign that mass movements can shift deeply ingrained prejudice.

He took a closer look by pinpointing six pivotal moments in the movement: uprisings following the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, the shooting at a Black church in Charleston, the Democratic National Convention’s resolution on Black Lives Matter in 2015, and the shooting of anti-police-brutality protesters in 2015. After each of these events, the IAT data set showed, racial bias against the Black community decreased across all political lines—including conservatives.

“There’s hope in social movements like Black Lives Matter,” says Sawyer. “A mass social movement involves many people across the country and chips away at structural racism.”

While racial and sexual bias has seen a slight downtrend over the last decade, other biases have not followed suit. Anti-age and disability have stayed relatively stable, while anti-body weight bias has steadily gotten worse since 2008 (see the graph below). “The biases where we’ve seen mass movements, around BLM and LGBTQ marriage equality—those have gotten better,” says Sawyer. “We haven’t seen recent movements around disability rights or anti-ageism or body size related movements. We should be trying to build those and support those as a society.”

Implicit Attitude Test results over time. (Mahzarin Banaji/)

When asked about movements causing political backlash, especially when protests sometimes lead to violence and unrest, Sawyer says, “Despite certain political forces branding movements as violent or changing the narrative to be all about looting and so forth, massive rebellions and uprising seem to work. Not only do they decrease people’s biases, but they often win political results.” For example, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements absorbed harsh criticism from the opposing side, but pulled out victories in law-enforced school desegregation and the legal dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the South (although some of these institutions still exist in different forms today). “Movements do really change biases,” says Sawyer.

How to face down your own implicit bias

In The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander emphasizes that this type of discrimination “reflect[s] automatic, unconscious thought processes, not careful deliberations.”

To successfully manage your own implicit bias, says Jennifer Eberhardt, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, you must slow down and think carefully. “There are certain conditions under which we become more vulnerable to it: when we’re thinking fast and moving fast,” Eberhardt told Time in 2019. “We can slow down and make a shift so we’re less likely to act on bias.”

Nextdoor.com, a virtual neighborhood hub that contains community posts on everything from babysitter requests to warnings about suspicious activity, has tried to implement this strategy to minimize prejudicial posts. In 2015, Nextdoor.com decided to work with Eberhardt and various other nonprofits to fight against the influx of racially influenced comments. When a user writes a review, perhaps describing a Black man as “suspicious,” they must answer a series of questions, such as “ask yourself—is what I saw actually suspicious, especially if I take race or ethnicity out of the equation?” before posting the review. When a user references a contractors’ race in a review, further questions dig for more distinctive characteristics instead. Nextdoor.com staff also incorporated a racial profiling flag beside each review. These initiatives caused a 75 percent reduction in racially influenced comments and reviews over the 110,000 local networks hosted by Nextdoor.com, according to founder Nirav Tolia.

The practice of slowing down and practicing deliberate thought processes may sound more like a suppression of your implicit bias than a way to make it go away, but ensuring that you’re not letting prejudice rule your actions is the first—and most effective—step.

There’s no instant, foolproof way to make implicit bias go away completely, but self awareness and education are key to making that mental shift happen. Research shows that implicit biases arise from the daily barrage of information that crowds our eyes and ears—so by harnessing control over this data flood, you can slowly but surely alter your mindset. Consistently surrounding yourself with diverse perspectives by reading the writings of Black people and watching movies starring non-white protagonists, as well as staying aware of how news media may enforce certain biases, can help you neutralize your subconscious racism.

Banaji’s next project involves a self-education series in the form of study modules, articles, podcasts, and graphics posted on a website called Outsmarting Human Minds. She hopes to transform this website into a full-fledged course for use at schools and companies.

Reflecting on unconscious bias is inherently difficult and disturbing for people who don’t consider themselves to be racist. But our subconscious minds won’t change without some very conscious effort. You can actively work to help others overcome their implicit bias, too: Sawyer’s research on the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement shows just how much progress can be made in amplifying Black voices and causes.

“These experiences will change people,” says Banaji. “A white kid who marches in protest and watches the power structure unfold in real time will not be the same.”

[scootoaster]

Anti-Black bias affects just about everyone. What’s the best way to deal with implicit racism?

Anti-Black bias can even shared by Black people. (Clay Banks via Unsplash/)

In a world where many people actively work to fight against systemic racism and even more claim to be “woke,” the science of implicit bias reveals why most of us still have work to do. Implicit biases are like puppeteers lurking inside our heads, coloring our every action with unconscious stereotyping and prejudice.

Humans begin forming simple mental links in infancy: We learn to associate highchairs with mealtime, parents with comfort, and cribs with naps. Data streams at us from all directions—news reports, television shows, family chats, friendly gossip—and we absorb it all. But this unconscious practice of grouping different words and objects gets more complex as we grow up, and it gives rise to insidious racial biases. Because many of the world’s sources of stimuli, especially television news reports, present Black people as criminals or threatening characters, our brains naturally begin to make an all-too-common connection—Black people and danger go together.

These biases quietly and unconsciously influence our actions throughout our lives, even as some of us actively protest against racism and discrimination. Implicit biases can be just as dangerous as consciously, actively demonstrated acts of racism, such as using slurs or attacking Black people, and they’re much more insidious. In a chilling 2002 study, randomly selected participants played a video game that featured photographs of white and Black individuals holding either a gun or another object (a wallet, soda can, or cell phone). Subjects were told to decide, as quickly as possible, whether or not to shoot the character. Consistent with earlier studies, nearly everyone made the “correct” decision to shoot at an armed Black individual more often than a white individual.

Various studies, including one conducted in 2018, confirm that Black people carry the same bias. Subjects identified dangerous objects, such as guns, much faster after viewing a Black face compared to a face with both Black and white features. These snappy, adrenaline-driven responses arise from reflexive, unconscious thought processes rather than deliberate, careful reflections.

Implicit biases can weigh BIPOC down every day—and destroy their lives in an instant. Researchers are working to understand how these insidious stereotypes drive our behavior, and how we might learn to shake them off.

The origins of implicit bias

We can trace the origins of implicit bias—or at least our cultural awareness of it—back to a thick manila envelope sitting in a P.O. Box in New Haven in 1990. Mahzarin Banaji, then a graduate student in psychology at Yale University, had always been fascinated by the idea of implicit memory—past experiences that we’re not consciously aware of, but that still manage to control our actions. When Banaji came across famous cognitive psychologist Larry Jacoby’s study on the subject, she decided to replicate the experiments for herself.

The simple and elegant study, “Becoming Famous Overnight,” was published in 1989. First, the subject reads through a list of names pulled from a phone book, such as Sebastian Weisdorf—these names are designated as “old not-famous.” The next day, the subject goes through a new list with three types of names: the old not-famous names, new not-famous names (like Andrew Ringren), and famous names (like Wayne Gretzky, a then-well-known hockey player from Canada). The subject then sorts the names into two piles—famous and not-famous. Sorting errors arose almost exclusively from old not-famous names, which subjects mistakenly sorted into the famous pile, thus confirming Jacoby’s hypothesis of implicit memory. Memories have a texture to them, and the inexplicable familiarity of the name Sebastian Weisdorf caused confusion, guiding subjects to mark them as belonging to celebrities.

A year after the study’s publication, Banaji wrote a postcard to Jacoby asking for the data, and soon enough, a manila envelope appeared in her mailbox. When she rifled through the pages, she found something puzzling—all the names were male. Banaji repeated the experiment using a mix of names and discovered that non-famous females didn’t tend to follow Jacoby’s hypothesis: Sally Weisdorf didn’t become famous overnight like Sebastian Weisdorf did.

Banaji began chatting with subjects after the tests were finished, asking them if they considered gender while sorting. Had they been making the conscious decision that vaguely familiar men were more likely to be celebrities than vaguely familiar women were? Each insisted that sexism had nothing to do with their selection process. “There was a complete lack of awareness that they were relying on gender,” Banaji says. “That was the moment for me when the light bulb went off.”

Perhaps, she thought, this unconscious reaction could help us understand the nuances of how the human mind categorizes the world.

In the next few years, Banaji and two other researchers at Yale, Tony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, banded together to develop a series of tests to measure what they began to call implicit social cognition, something that deeply impacts our social attitudes, behavior, and perceptions. The Implicit Attitude Tests, or IATs, were first published on Yale’s website in September 1988, and measure the strength of associations between different concepts (black faces, white faces) and evaluations (good, bad) by asking the user to categorize certain words and images, and measuring the response time for users to group certain stimuli together. The test went viral, especially after it was featured on Oprah. The researchers ended the month with 45,000 results to parse through.

Over time, Banaji and her team created variations of the original IAT, including tests that measure bias against disabilities, sexuality, certain ethnicities, weight, gender, skin tone, and much more. The true value of the test, however, lies in the two-decade aggregation of implicit bias data, which has proven to be a goldmine for psychologists studying this phenomenon. By tracing the arc of these scores over time, especially during the Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ movements, scientists are attempting to crack open the phenomenon—and find out how to fix it.

Seeing and participating in rallies can help shift implicit bias. (Unsplash/)

Mass movements can shift biases—slowly

In a 2018 study, Jeremy Sawyer, a professor of behavioral science at Kingsborough Community College, looked at implicit bias data collected from 2009 to 2016. He wanted to see how results had changed during Barack Obama’s presidency, and the rise of Black Lives Matter after the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Many had hoped that anti-Black racism would decrease with Obama’s inauguration. Previous studies had indicated that bias decreases momentarily after subjects are shown images of highly respected Black figures such as Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. But Sawyer found that at a society-wide level, the exact opposite occurred: From 2009 to 2013, anti-Black bias slightly increased among white and Black populations.

The trend only started to reverse when the Black Lives Matter movement arose in 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Sawyer and his co-authors took this as a sign that mass movements can shift deeply ingrained prejudice.

He took a closer look by pinpointing six pivotal moments in the movement: uprisings following the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, the shooting at a Black church in Charleston, the Democratic National Convention’s resolution on Black Lives Matter in 2015, and the shooting of anti-police-brutality protesters in 2015. After each of these events, the IAT data set showed, racial bias against the Black community decreased across all political lines—including conservatives.

“There’s hope in social movements like Black Lives Matter,” says Sawyer. “A mass social movement involves many people across the country and chips away at structural racism.”

While racial and sexual bias has seen a slight downtrend over the last decade, other biases have not followed suit. Anti-age and disability have stayed relatively stable, while anti-body weight bias has steadily gotten worse since 2008 (see the graph below). “The biases where we’ve seen mass movements, around BLM and LGBTQ marriage equality—those have gotten better,” says Sawyer. “We haven’t seen recent movements around disability rights or anti-ageism or body size related movements. We should be trying to build those and support those as a society.”

Implicit Attitude Test results over time. (Mahzarin Banaji/)

When asked about movements causing political backlash, especially when protests sometimes lead to violence and unrest, Sawyer says, “Despite certain political forces branding movements as violent or changing the narrative to be all about looting and so forth, massive rebellions and uprising seem to work. Not only do they decrease people’s biases, but they often win political results.” For example, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements absorbed harsh criticism from the opposing side, but pulled out victories in law-enforced school desegregation and the legal dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the South (although some of these institutions still exist in different forms today). “Movements do really change biases,” says Sawyer.

How to face down your own implicit bias

In The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander emphasizes that this type of discrimination “reflect[s] automatic, unconscious thought processes, not careful deliberations.”

To successfully manage your own implicit bias, says Jennifer Eberhardt, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, you must slow down and think carefully. “There are certain conditions under which we become more vulnerable to it: when we’re thinking fast and moving fast,” Eberhardt told Time in 2019. “We can slow down and make a shift so we’re less likely to act on bias.”

Nextdoor.com, a virtual neighborhood hub that contains community posts on everything from babysitter requests to warnings about suspicious activity, has tried to implement this strategy to minimize prejudicial posts. In 2015, Nextdoor.com decided to work with Eberhardt and various other nonprofits to fight against the influx of racially influenced comments. When a user writes a review, perhaps describing a Black man as “suspicious,” they must answer a series of questions, such as “ask yourself—is what I saw actually suspicious, especially if I take race or ethnicity out of the equation?” before posting the review. When a user references a contractors’ race in a review, further questions dig for more distinctive characteristics instead. Nextdoor.com staff also incorporated a racial profiling flag beside each review. These initiatives caused a 75 percent reduction in racially influenced comments and reviews over the 110,000 local networks hosted by Nextdoor.com, according to founder Nirav Tolia.

The practice of slowing down and practicing deliberate thought processes may sound more like a suppression of your implicit bias than a way to make it go away, but ensuring that you’re not letting prejudice rule your actions is the first—and most effective—step.

There’s no instant, foolproof way to make implicit bias go away completely, but self awareness and education are key to making that mental shift happen. Research shows that implicit biases arise from the daily barrage of information that crowds our eyes and ears—so by harnessing control over this data flood, you can slowly but surely alter your mindset. Consistently surrounding yourself with diverse perspectives by reading the writings of Black people and watching movies starring non-white protagonists, as well as staying aware of how news media may enforce certain biases, can help you neutralize your subconscious racism.

Banaji’s next project involves a self-education series in the form of study modules, articles, podcasts, and graphics posted on a website called Outsmarting Human Minds. She hopes to transform this website into a full-fledged course for use at schools and companies.

Reflecting on unconscious bias is inherently difficult and disturbing for people who don’t consider themselves to be racist. But our subconscious minds won’t change without some very conscious effort. You can actively work to help others overcome their implicit bias, too: Sawyer’s research on the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement shows just how much progress can be made in amplifying Black voices and causes.

“These experiences will change people,” says Banaji. “A white kid who marches in protest and watches the power structure unfold in real time will not be the same.”

[njawaidofficial]

'Spider-Man: Homecoming': A Thank-You From a "Nerd School" Alum

http://styleveryday.com/2017/07/10/spider-man-homecoming-a-thank-you-from-a-nerd-school-alum/

'Spider-Man: Homecoming': A Thank-You From a "Nerd School" Alum

Ciara Wardlow is a student at Wellesley College, a Heat Vision contributor, and a 2014 alum of a math and sciences high school she lovingly refers to as “a nerd school.”

When I saw the first trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming, I had two major takeaways. The first was, “Wow they are young—dear lord I’m old” (thankfully, a comforting Google search later that evening informed me that they merely looked younger than me). The second was, “Wait, does Peter Parker actually go to nerd school?!”

Let me make one thing clear right off the bat — I say “nerd school” with all love. You see, I went to nerd school — the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, or, in the words of WIRED magazine, “Hogwarts for Hackers.”

While most of the Internet was debating the necessity of yet another Spider-Man reboot (“Three in the past ten years is ridiculous.” “But he was so much fun in Captain America: Civil War!”), I was quite curious — even cautiously optimistic — about how Homecoming would portray the high school experience. Popular culture has an obsession with high school that I generally find a little strange (I mean, the typical review of the real-life high school experience is “would not do again, even for money, zero stars”) — and irritating. Despite all the film and TV shows centered around those four years, the range of characters they explore in those projects is, frankly, abysmal. The same social hierarchies, the same 15 stock characters (about half of whom can be traced back to John Hughes), the same checklist of scenes that seemingly must be included.

Having talked with people who went to all sorts of high schools — private, public, Catholic, day schools, boarding schools, STEM schools, art schools, you name it — or interacting with my younger sister, currently in high school (a different one than I went to) and having a completely different high school experience than I did, I’ve come to the conclusion that the one constant is that it’s a weird time, but a million different flavors of weird. So why do 95 percent of high school movies return to the same 5 percent or so of what’s available?

Both previous cinematic iterations of Spider-Man start out in high school, because it’s Spider-Man, and anything else would be sacrilege. Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker is depicted as a “science nerd” type at Midtown High — a one-scene wonder of a place that manages to be as emblematic of early 2000s popular culture’s idea of the high school experience as an Avril Lavigne song — never shown doing any actual science. Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker is first introduced primarily as more of a photographer (when we first meet him as a teenager, he’s carrying a camera and asked by two separate characters to take a picture), skater boy (attempted) protector of the small type.

Both characters are weighed down by tired teen movie cliches and actors whom, in spite of their talents, look like Hollywood “teenagers” (aka 20-somethings with backpacks) instead of actual high school students. 

But if my 15-year-old little sister introduced me to a boy who looked and sounded like Tom Holland’s Peter Parker and said, “Hey Ciara, this is my boyfriend,” I wouldn’t think anything of it except maybe to give her two thumbs-up or something equally embarrassing because that is my sisterly prerogative; if she did the same with the equivalent of Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfields’ Peter Parkers, I would drag her away forcibly for her own good, with flashbacks to Matthew McConaughey’s character from Dazed and Confused playing in my head. Of course, I do realize that Tom Holland is actually my age instead of hers, but he really pulls off 15. Not Riverdale type “15” (come on, think about it, the show would be five kinds of creepy if they actually looked the age they were supposed to be). Actual 15. I mean, just think of the mustache they glued on him in The Lost City of Z to try to make him look not 15. And his behavior as Peter Parker — from the phone video diary the film opens up with to the way he interacts with his friends and Aunt May — reminds me of various encounters with my sister who actually is that age, so I feel qualified and comfortable giving that a seal of authenticity as well.

Homecoming is, in many ways, an homage to teen movies. Even if you cut out the Ferris Bueller suburbia chase scene, Homecoming practically oozes John Hughes, but without being John Hughes Rip-off #1005, because Homecoming isn’t stealing its characterizations from the Hollywood’s Idea of High School playbook. Sure, there might be aspects of certain characters that are very familiar, but not repetitive — and switching the setting to a nerd school with a different type of social hierarchy is a huge help. Instead of a poor John Hughes copy, Homecoming is the nerdy teen superhero movie John Hughes never made.

And just as the high school experience is not a monolith, neither is the nerd high school experience. But there are a few sure things: no nerd school ecosystem can support the machismo jock type, even if you have an individual there who would fit the bill in a more traditional high school environment. For one, you might not have the sports teams available to inflate their ego. I don’t think it’s explicitly stated whether or not Midtown School of Science and Technology has a football team, but my alma mater IMSA certainly doesn’t — and yes, you can totally have Homecoming dances without football. Secondly — and this is the really important one here — you just can’t pull off “dork” or “nerd” or “geek” as an insult when you go to a school with “Science” in the name. It’s like making fun of someone for wearing a blue shirt while also wearing a blue shirt.

Now, Homecoming has gotten some heat for making Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) smaller than his cinematic predecessors and a member of the Academic Decathlon team instead of some jock with a ball that he could use to concuss mathletes or something, but that sort of choice is incredibly important to maintaining a believable nerd school atmosphere. STEM school teenagers are still teenagers. They can still be bullies, and make fun of people for dumb things — like having a name that is a somewhat outdated euphemism for a certain part of male anatomy — and for flimsy reasons that usually stem from their own insecurities (because, you know, they’re teenagers). They’re just probably not going to get into a fistfight in the hallway. The choice to make Flash a non-athletically inclined but highly jealous and insecure frenemy type also frees Homecoming from requiring yet another Flash/Peter showdown. “But I wanted Peter Parker to humiliate Flash Thompson in a fight on school grounds!” some of you might say. Well, Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man already gave you two to pick from. Don’t be greedy.

It’s the details of Homecoming that soothe the tiny corners of my soul that repeat exposure to the remaining 99 percent of Hollywood depictions of high school have left in a near-permanent state of irritation. It’s the moment where Ned (Jacob Batalon) has a brief encounter with the chess team, who are just kids playing chess who happen to notice Ned creeping through the halls after class and wonder what he’s doing, as opposed to twitchy mole-people in need of a good scrubbing and a visit from the social skills fairy. It’s how the snarky Michelle Jones (Zendaya) clearly cares more about her books than her appearance but still remains you know, hygienic, and acts aloof as a defense mechanism in spite of clearly caring about the people in her social circle (been there, done that, got the T-shirt). It’s all these little things in Homecoming and more that had me leaving the film with a goofy grin on my face; little things that I had been looking for in every depiction of high school I had seen on a screen since being in high school myself, only to come up empty-handed until now.

Of course Homecoming is not a documentary. For example, even if Peter Parker is one of the most brilliant minds to have ever lived and can walk into his exams in every class without so much as five minutes of preparation and get perfect scores on all of them, putting in zero work outside of class — especially with the whole five stolen backpacks thing, which would also suggest five occasions of losing any and all notes, assignments and books in said backpacks — would land him in even hotter water than the film suggests. But at least the film shows him, even if only for a brief few seconds in montage, actually doing work in classes, and not just when the subject of the class serves the plot of the film, but because he’s a high school sophomore and that’s what high school sophomores do. And the film also doesn’t do the thing where it says that he’s that sort of model student who turns in all his assignments on time and actually writes multiple drafts of essays, but actually shows him doing just about everything else in the world but actual homework — perhaps the one thing that teen movies do that, more than anything else, makes me want to hulk out into a green rage monster and smash things.

As someone who was a nerdy teen and spent my teenage years surrounded by fellow nerds, I went into Homecoming hoping to see a depiction of a nerdy teen with superpowers surrounded by other nerdy teens that rang true to my personal experience. And I left very happy.

Source

#Alum #Homecoming #Nerd #School #SpiderMan #ThankYou

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 2/20/17

Kamisama Kiss, Vol. 23 | By Julietta Suzuki | Viz Media – As we get ever closer to the ending, everything is getting ramped up a notch, and we’re seeing the true villain of the series is not Akura-Oh. Indeed, the humanity that Akura-Oh has inherited by Kirihito leads to some of the best scenes in the book, as the young girl lost in the Underworld turns out to be someone far more important than we thought. And then there’s Nanami, who continues to be told what to do and then just does what she wants to anyway, and usually ends up turning out all right. Best of all, though, is Yatori, who’s always been awful but really goes above and beyond to become a truly hateful villain, the sort you really want to see Tomoe and Nanami destroy. Which will have to wait for next time. – Sean Gaffney

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, Vol. 22 | By Shinobu Ohtaka | VIZ Media – It continues to impress me how complex Magi has become. In this volume, Alibaba learns about the Kou Empire’s plan to achieve peace through domination and homogenization, and is pressured into an alliance for the sake of Balbadd. When the world’s leaders gather at a conference, Aladdin finally reveals what happened on the world of Alma Tran, with direct parallels to what Kou is trying to achieve. It’s an affecting tale, with an adorable kitty beast, but what I liked best about the volume was Alibaba learning about and reacting to the terrible things Kou and Sinbad have done to others in pursuit of their goals. Both use essentially the same line about having to get their hands dirty in order to protect their countries, and one wonders how far Alibaba’s own ideals will be compromised for the same reason, especially given his new allegiance. Fascinating stuff! – Michelle Smith

Maid-sama!, Vols. 13-14 | By Hiro Fujiwara | Viz Media – Continuing from my last brief, it’s not just me—Misaki’s sister is definitely sweet on Hinata, which I suspect will pay off nicely next time in a “Pair the Spares” way. And you can tell the next omnibus will wrap things up, as we’re definitely headed towards an endgame, defined in part by Usui deciding to stop fighting against everything and transfer schools. The big reason that you can tell things might be ending, though, is that we finally get the confession from Misaki, and it’s as awesome as you’d expect. Misaki may still struggle with maturity and the fact that everything seems to embarrass her, but she’s come a long way. Maid-sama! has had issues, but I’m pleased we get to read the ending at last—next time. – Sean Gaffney

My Hero Academia, Vol. 7 | By Kohei Horikoshi | Viz Media – We wrap up one arc and begin another here, so there’s a bit of shifting gears and some cute school scenes in between. The kids learn the value of secrecy and propaganda, especially when it applies to schoolchildren who have technically broken the law. They also move on to midterm exams, which involve a practical portion that involves battling their teachers in sets of two. Naturally, Midoriya and Bakugo are paired up, because everyone has noticed Bakugo seemingly can’t stand Midoriya. Expect lessons to be learned, as this fight is definitely going to carry over into the next book. But most importantly, the chief of police in the city appears to be McGruff the Crime Dog. I approve. – Sean Gaffney

My Love Story!!, Vol. 11 | By Kazune Kawahara and Aruko | Viz Media – This volume continues the development from the last one, as Yamato spends a lot of time trying to gently get through to Takeo that she is, in fact, OK with it if he tries to go further physically in their relationship. He gets it in the end, but we don’t really have them go any further—this continues to be one of the purest shoujo series ever, so I’m not surprised. Instead we introduce a new rival, but it’s not another love rival this time around. It’s a new transfer student who immediately seems to bond with Suna… in fact, it looks like he’s doing it on purpose. Could the new guy be using Suna? I’m definitely looking forward to the next book to find out, as Suna’s motivations fascinate me. – Sean Gaffney

Please Tell Me! Galko-chan, Vol. 2 | By Kenya Suzuki| Seven Seas – This is not quite as much fun as the first volume, and when it attempts to add new characters you can sort of hear the gears turning loudly in the author’s head. It’s at its best when it focuses on our core trio and their adorable if somewhat overly awkward interrelations. My favorite part was probably Ojou’s concert recital, where she really shines, and also manages to show off that she actually has friends from school. It’s also adorable when we see her get pissed off for never arguing with Galko or Otako, if only as it means she actually changes expression. And there’s still a bit of sex talk but not nearly as much as the first volume. It’s a fun gag series, and the colors are fantastic. – Sean Gaffney

Re:Monster, Vol. 2 | By Kogitsune Kanekiru and Haruyoshi Kobayakawa| Seven Seas – I’m not entirely sure why I kept reading this after the first volume, and if I want to be honest I’m still not sure after getting through volume two. Its flaws are many and obvious—it is a massive overblown male power fantasy, the narrative is unemotional and stoic (though to be fair this sometimes works, usually when Gob-Rou is required to be clueless about women), and the idea of “it’s not rape if they’re drugged into horniness” is appalling in every way. But I dunno, there’s still a compulsive readability to this, and given the large numbers of what amount to orgies in the series it could have been even less tasteful. If you’re going to read a screwed-up male power fantasy, this isn’t a bad choice. Also, T for Teen, Seven Seas? Really? – Sean Gaffney

A Springtime with Ninjas, Vol. 1 | By Narumi Hasegaki | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Sometimes, a shoujo series asks its readers to swallow a ludicrous premise but rewards them with solid characters and emotional arcs. Not so, here. Benio Kasugami is the sheltered daughter of the richest family in Japan, which has the tradition that she will have to marry the first guy who can get past her ninja bodyguards and steal a kiss from her. She rails against her confinement, but naturally, the moment she steps outside she is insta-kidnapped and nearly kissed before her protector (and childhood first love, naturally), Tamaki Kageshita, swoops in for the rescue. Rinse, repeat. There are quite a few clichés here, but the real issue impacting my enjoyment was Benio herself, who is equal parts clueless and reckless, which gives me no reason to root for her. I’ll be passing on the rest of this series. – Michelle Smith

Ten Count, Vol. 3 | By Rihito Takarai | SuBLime – Volume three was to be the deciding factor in whether I’d continue reading Ten Count. I had hoped that more subtle and insightful characterization would be forthcoming, but alas, it was not to be. In her author’s note, Takarai makes it clear that she sees what Kurose and Shirotani are doing as a “dom” training his “sub,” and the result walks a line between run-of-the-mill smutty BL and an icky erosion of the notion of consent. What does it say when in one panel Shirotani is declaring “no means no” and a few panels later, is shown to be willing after all? Kurose continues to be baffling, too, showing concern for Shirotani and pride in his efforts to conquer his OCD one moment, and telling him that if they were lovers, he’d “do even more things to you that would make you cry” in the next. I’m done. – Michelle Smith

By: Michelle Smith