#both given all the narrative attention and none of it simultaneously

[ssaalexblake]

I was gonna put jack crusher for that thing but i refuse to imply that that’s irrational

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

Camila Noceda and Flawed Parenting

A perspective by a flawed person with loving but extremely flawed parents

I’m genuinely baffled at some people’s hostile reaction towards Camila. Like… do any of you have flawless parents that always know the best solution instantly, make no mistakes and never get emotional?

My parents are great. They’re super supportive and I love them very, very much. Overall I think I got very lucky in the parents department.

But god, they are far from flawless. I still live at home, and despite all the good, there’s moments when I can’t take my dad anymore. He’s the kind of dad that stayed up until two am to help me with homework when I was in school, and he does so, so many things to make sure I’m happy. I know that. But despite all of this, I have told my mom in emotional moments before that I’m not sure if I can keep living with him, because for all his good sides, he has a couple of fatal flaws that sometimes make him unbearable.

My mom listens to me and is very open to being educated on certain topics, but she has her flaws, too. She hates when I fight with my dad, and gets so torn up about it that I’ve once apologized to my dad out of fear of her getting into a car crash otherwise. She’s very vocal about certain flaws of mine, and sometimes uses the things she does for me as leverage against me when she gets very emotional.

And both of my parents pay a lot more attention to my brother because he needs it more, because he’s more of a “problem child” while I “seem so capable” even when I’m not.

And guess what? I’m not a perfect child. I make mistakes sometimes, some of them pretty severe. Just like Luz, I’m the kind of person that struggles to communicate certain issues of mine to her parents. I’m stubborn, and when I get emotional, I say very hurtful things sometimes. So do they.

And this has nothing to do with my parents being horrible or abusive. They’re neither of those things.

The takeaway from this should not be that my entire family is made up of terrible people, but that we’re all flawed in our own ways, despite loving each other and trying our best. There’s things about my parents I wish I could change, and there are things about me that my parents wish they could change. And to an extent, that’s perfectly normal.

In our strengths and flaws and frustration with each other, we’re all human.

Specific, spoiler-y Camila and Luz things under the cut since this got very long.

We have no indication that Camila has a pattern of emotionally manipulating Luz. Her “emotional manipulation” as I’ve seen some people put it, is people for some reason thinking that the second you become an adult, you’re suddenly perfect and can no longer make mistakes, lest you’ll be dubbed horrible and abusive.

The whole concept is absurd to me. There is no perfect way to parent. There simply isn’t. Of course, there’s some genuinely abusive patterns that are horrible and inexcusable. But out of the parenting styles that aren’t, which one works depends on a number of factors, one of which absolutely includes that every child is different and has different needs. Camila is an amazing parent for Vee, giving the kid everything she’s ever longed for. She’s not an ideal parent for Luz. And that’s because Luz and Vee have fundamentally different needs.

Likewise, Luz is a pretty great child for Eda, but not a perfect fit for Camila. Luz relates to Eda a lot more than she relates to her mom, and that’s why the two of them have an easier time understanding each other. Both of these mother-child relationships exist, and one is not more doomed to fail than the other, but I think you’ll agree that the better you understand someone and where they’re coming from, the easier it is to communicate, pick up on certain signs, etc.

As mom and daughter, Camila and Luz are both flawed and have issues seeing the other’s perspective because of how different they are. And we should simultaneously acknowledge both of their roles in the issue and give both of them the space to learn and grow past those issues.

Luz struggles to communicate her problems. She doesn’t want to burden people in the demon realm, and it’s a given that this started out as not wanting to burden her mom. So she keeps quiet about her issues. Camila tries hard but can’t read her daughter’s mind, so there’s only so much she can do to understand and help the way Luz needs her to. Hell, Eda, who Luz is a lot more open with than her mom, struggles to help her, because Luz doesn’t tell her what’s wrong. I don’t see anyone calling Eda a terrible mom for that.

Camila tries her best, but she struggles to understand her daughter because of this, and because of how fundamentally different they are. She loves Luz’s creativity, we actively see her supporting it in the new episode—she keeps the weird stuff Luz made because she thinks Luz will regret throwing it away, and even plays along in what she assumes to be some elaborate role play because “she’s glad Luz kept her creativity even though it’s not made things easy for her at school”. But at the beginning of the show, said creativity got out of hand and people got hurt. Luz could’ve gotten hurt. So of course Camila had to interfere. I love Luz dearly, but she thought it was okay to bring snakes to school and set off fireworks inside a school building. Creativity is great. Doing reckless stuff that causes people to get hurt is not.

In sending Luz to camp, Camila tried to have someone else fix her issue because she didn’t know how to help Luz. That was a mistake, and a bad one at that, but she’s realizing that. She looks disheartened when Vee tries to throw out Luz’s stuff, because she never meant to change her daughter or take that part of her away. She just thought Luz needed a reality check—which, for the record, is something the narrative actually agrees with.

Luz spends her time in the demon realm getting reality check after reality check, realizing that even her ideal fantasy world where she has everything she always wanted doesn’t mean she’s free of consequences. She goes overboard constantly, causing:

-Eda to be forced to fly into a trap because Luz is chasing a fantasy (Witches before Wizards)

-Eda to almost be branded by her sister because Luz doesn’t think through why Eda doesn’t use magic to publicly announce her presence constantly (Once Upon a Swap)

-Eda and the twins to get kidnapped by a Slitherbeast because Luz stole Amity’s wand (Adventures in the Elements)

-Her friends to get hurt when she goes overboard trying to help Willow (Wing it like Witches)

-Eda to be captured and almost petrified because Luz thought she could just steal from the Emperor with no consequences in an attempt to help (Agony of a Witch)

I’m like 90% sure these aren’t even all. None of those make her a terrible person, for the record, but as all humans are, she is flawed and makes bad choices. She learns from these experiences and matures, just like her mom had hoped she would at camp. She’s also made friends there, which was another thing Camila wanted for her daughter.

You’ll probably realize that a lot of Luz’s behaviors I mentioned follow one of two patterns: 1. Luz’s idealized fantasy world causing problems, when she walks around with rose tinted glasses and gets people in trouble in the process because she hasn’t thought about the consequences, and 2. Luz trying to help someone she loves, but instead making things worse in the progress. The issue with this one is often that she doesn’t communicate her ideas/listen to the people she’s trying to help—like when Willow and Gus said they’ve had enough of Grudgby, or how she never actually talks to Eda about the healing hat idea before doing something reckless.

…does the latter one sound familiar to you at all? No? Because it’s the exact same thing that Camila did.

Some of the things Luz does are reckless and actively endanger others and herself, and that’s something that I think we need to acknowledge before judging Camila. As Luz’s mom, it’s Camila’s job to interfere in those situations. That she made a mistake while trying to protect Luz doesn’t make her a terrible person, especially as, again, the narrative proves her right to an extent.

I’m not saying her making Luz promise to come back and stay isn’t something that hurt Luz—it absolutely is. But it was born out of desperation. She’s emotional and in shock. She’s so full of pain and regret. She just wants her fourteen year old daughter home safe, and there’s nothing abusive or even morally ambiguous about that.

From Luz’s perspective, what she says is absolutely heartbreaking, but from Camila’s, it’s perfectly reasonable. I doubt Camila has the full picture, but even if she does, she’s had a full fifteen seconds to process that her daughter has not only been lying to her for months, but chose to leave her, and is in the demon realm of all places. Of course she’d be emotional and upset about that! Who wouldn’t? Camila isn’t a robot. If she’d been calm about this I’d be way more concerned, honestly.

My parents don’t get mad that easily, but if I would lie to them for weeks on end, they’d be pissed off too, not even taking the running away from home part into account. That’s a normal thing. People don’t like being lied to. Camila is absolutely devastated in that moment because she’s scared that Luz left because she hates her, when Luz actively states that her leaving wasn’t about her mom—which is another thing we should really be acknowledging.

Abusive parents suck and abuse should obviously never be apologized or trivialized, but saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment isn’t the same thing as being an abusive parent. My parents have done this. I’ve done this. And yes, those things can be emotionally manipulative, but there’s a huge difference in whether that’s a habit or a person speaking out of hurt and desperation in a very specific context. I doubt there’s anyone on the entire planet that hasn’t had a bad moment where they’ve said something like this because they were hurting. People lash out when they hurt, and they beg for reassurance when they’re scared. That’s something we all do.

The whole mindset of “all parents have to be perfect and can never get upset or make any mistakes” is harmful as hell, and honestly also very unrealistic. No parent is perfect, and especially people like me who have a relationship with their parents that’s very good overall should know that.

Once you have a child, parenting is a non-stop learning process, every day for the rest of your life. Taking away that room to grow and expecting perfection isn’t helping anyone, especially not struggling single parents.

And I see Camila as someone who is very willing to learn, because at the end of the day, all she wants is for Luz to be happy. Let’s give her some time to wrap her head around this whole situation. Let’s see what she says once she sees for herself how happy Luz is in that world, may it be via the videos eventually coming through or Camila visiting and meeting Luz’s found family, her friends and her girlfriend.

Ultimately, I don’t think Camila will force Luz to stay at home, but we have to give her some time. She wants what’s best for Luz, and she’s gonna need some convincing that a dangerous magical world is what’s best. I feel like that’s very normal considering the circumstances.

Her and Luz need to work on their communication on both ends, they both have things to learn, but I’m certain they’ll manage to fix their relationship in the long run.

If the bunk bed is any indication, I think Vee is gonna stay in the human realm permanently while Luz sleeps at home but keeps attending Hexside in the daytime. That feels like a solution that keeps everyone happy, and allows Luz to spend time with all the people she loves. I can’t see her being forced to choose at the end.

As a closing statement: Eda isn’t an ideal mom, Amity isn’t an ideal friend or girlfriend and neither is Luz, Lilith isn’t an ideal sister… but that’s because no one is ever an ideal anything. Being flawed is a big part of being human. Everyone has different facets to their personality. Their flaws are what makes them such great, relatable, believable characters.

And I feel the same way about Camila. She’s an extremely believable character that reminds me of my own parents, flawed but very loving nonetheless.

(Also honestly, I think it’s pretty telling that some of you guys immediately bash the black single mom that’s obviously trying her hardest while giving the benefit of the doubt to Alador, who has been portrayed as neglecting and threatened his six year old daughter on screen. This was already a thing before we knew much about either of them, and I’m disappointed but unfortunately not very surprised that it still is.)

[tsutsumi-kaina]

Theory: AFO Gave Tomura Decay (Part 2)

Continued from this post (link!)

Warning: This post has spoilers for both the most recent chapters of MHA (up to ch. 316) as well as spoilers for Vigilantes (up to ch. 109).

Straight to the point:

5. Tomura’s eyes and hair change color with the activation of Decay

It’s easy to write this one off as the anime making questionable choices about Tomura’s color scheme yet again (five years of baby blue hair ya’ll)— but just for giggles, let’s just assume that Horikoshi did intend for Tenko's natural eye color to be black, just like Nana and Kotaro. 

Now, there's a theory that Decay's activation destroyed all of Tomura's melanin, which is a theory I enjoy because it totally tracks (albinos lack pigmentation and they have "red eyes" because we're seeing their blood vessels rather than the actual color of their irises). I also like the “his hair went white from the trauma” and “he straight up went super saiyan” theories, because I’m a sucker that kind of specifically anime bullshit. 

But what if none of those theories are right? What if there was another reason why Tomura's hair and eyes change color? What if the change was meant to foreshadow something just a bit more... sinister?

Presented Without Comment

Through Dabi/Touya’s story we know that quirk factors do have an effect on things like hair color, and can even change a person's hair color upon activation— when Rei’s quirk factor becomes “dominant,” we see that Touya's hair gradually begins to turn white as his body changes to become more suited to an ice quirk despite his own quirk being fire-based.

That sound familiar?

So, Tomura's change to red eyes and white hair specifically  starts to look more than a little insidious if we assume that A) AFO has always  planned to turn Tenko into a new vessel, and B) Tenko actually got his first “dose” of AFO in the form of Decay + a pseudo-vestige, and his body has been gradually changing to become more hospitable for AFO's quirk factor. Exposure to AFO’s quirk factor (and it raging around inside of him like a damn virus) may be the true cause of Tomura’s palette swap.

6. Tenko is 5 when decay manifests, even though it’s been repeatedly stated that age 4 is the latest age that quirks manifest.

This point has also been discussed to death, with people arguing that Tomura simply had to amass enough hatred for Decay to fully manifest (see point 2 on why this “explanation” was most likely just AFO being a gigantic fucking troll). I’ll instead encourage folks to evaluate this point from a narrative standpoint— Hori drew attention to Tenko’s age and his quirklessness for a reason.

“Will he like me if I get my quirk!?”  Uhhh....

And Tenko likely having been born quirkless leads to the next point:

7. Tenko, The Quirkless Wonder (or: how having a quirkless vessel is an integral part of AFO’s plan to snatch OFA and not straight up fucking die in the process)

Tenko being born quirkless makes him a perfect candidate to tolerate the simultaneous burden of both OFA/AFO without his lifespan getting completely drained in the process-- the nomufication surgery was more likely just a measure that was taken to make sure Tomura's body was strong enough to make use of both quirks right away.

8. You know what? *beats the dead horse anyway*

Man, isn’t there a sale at Men’s Warehouse you’re late to???

I know I said I wouldn’t touch on this point but come the fuck on, mister twenty-four-seven biz cas isn’t even trying to hide it 

Bonus Points:

Machia's sense of smell - Machia tracks others through scent, and is somehow able to locate Tomura after the LOV has hidden themselves deep within the mountains. This is in spite the fact that they've never met before (Machia literally asks Tomura "Are you the one who succeeded AFO?"-- so we can assume he was not secretly tracking or observing Tomura from afar).  We know that if Machia's never met a person before, he obviously can't track them via scent-- we see this when he has to stop and literally ask Mina for directions during a flashback. But he still manages to track down the LOV when not even the police/heroes had any inkling of their location. So. If Machia and Tomura have never met before, how was Machia able to find him? As funny as it is to imagine AFO rubbing a pair of dirty sneakers in Machia's face like he's an overgrown bloodhound, I'll put forth the following theory-- Machia was sniffing out Decay's quirk factor rather than Tomura himself. If Decay was formerly in the possession of AFO, and/or if a part of AFO’s quirk factor already exists inside Tomura, then tracking him down is a cinch for Machia.

AFO's pasttime is villain creation - There's a whole scene in Vigilantes where AFO discusses the true nature of a "villain," then brags about being able to create villains by causing imbalances in one's quirk + giving people unsuitable quirks + stimulating quirks with a "violent will" and forcing them to go haywire. It's, uh. Fairly damning, to say the least.

AFO may have used Decay to kill Nana - This one is more conspiracy theory than actual theory, and it may seem like a huge stretch, but hear me out! In its untrained form, we see that Decay reduces people to chunks instead of dusting them-- but it leaves their hands perfectly intact. It feels far too coincidental that AFO just so happened  to leave Nana’s hand intact after killing her, and apparently decided to preserve that hand for 30 years on a total whim— and then, wouldn’tcha know it, Tenko just so happens to manifest a quirk that pulps everything but miraculously leaves the hands of those victims perfectly intact. And AFO being sick enough to give a little boy who wants to be a hero the same quirk that killed his hero grandma is a given at this point.

 - - - - - - - - -

Anyway, I get that a lot of folks dislike this theory because it takes away a lot of Tomura’s agency-- but honestly, his entire character arc has been about him trying to rediscover his true self and reclaiming his agency after a lifetime of having his identity abused out of him by pretty much everyone he’s ever met. AFO was always going to be the final boss of that character arc, which has been less about “becoming the greatest villain” (and hoo boy people on twitter are reeeeally hung up on this particular misconception about Tomura’s arc) and more about discovering his true convictions and “becoming his own person”-- Just as Izuku’s character arc is about becoming his own person and learning to actually value himself, rather than him just becoming All Might 2.0 who acts as a hero at the complete expense of his own personhood.

I don’t feel that Decay being an implant from AFO harms Tomura’s character arc in any way-- rather, confronting the lie that he was somehow “born evil” and exists as a slave to Decay’s destructive impulse feels like the next hurdle Tomura needs to overcome before he can truly reclaim his agency. 

[fallout-lou-begas]

Regarding @yesjejunus:

(mentions of rape, abuse, and trauma herein)

I have never made an effort to hide it on my blog before, but I want to make it clear that yesjejunus is my friend and I care about them. If you ask me, it should be extremely transparent to all onlookers that the attack against them this week is motivated by more of a personal grudge and obsessive vendetta than any actual concern for the "well-being" of anyone "endangered" by them, evidenced further by the poaching of personal information gleaned from defunct social media profiles for no actionable reason other than intimidation, the willfully outlandish misinterpretations of inside jokes between friends, and the mutilation of the definition of "grooming" and the excessive outright fabrications required to distort their friendship with some adults who happen to be younger than themself into allegations of predation on minors. Yejejunus has not ever actually done anything remotely justifying this punitive severity to any other human being, and if you have your own grievances about their art, then no one is holding, and no one has ever held, a gun to your head to force you to like them, or like their art or seek it out. The sheer volume of harassment that they have received for scarcely more than fanfiction and fanart that people can avoid on their own terms through proper tag filtering or blocking is frankly unjustifiable.

If you are upset by a work of art that you encounter in fandom or otherwise then it is not an interpersonal conflict between you and the artist. The artist has not harmed you, the artist doesn't even know you. Artists may have a responsibility to utilize tags and warnings appropriately on broad or big-tent platforms, and yesjejunus fulfilled this responsibility thoroughly, but ultimately an individual is responsible for their own artistic consumption and for avoiding the art that they want to avoid themself. If there is something that you are entirely incapable of seeing even a hint of without lapsing into some kind of retraumatization, and an artist tags art containing this thing appropriately, then the onus is on you to have it filtered out and the failure is on you if you have not. Assuming that every individual artist must be held "accountable" for whether their art could possibly upset someone or not, and assuming that any given individual is helplessly incapable of avoiding art that makes them upset, is a destructive perspective that flattens the ability of artists to create that which means a lot to them personally, lest their own experiences discomfort some hypothetical audience, and regardless of whether it may provide catharsis or revelation for another.

Additionally, to assume that any and all depiction of abuse of any kind is inherently an endorsement, or a "glamorization" or "fetishization," is to forget that discomfort can often be the point of a work of art, as it is in the case of horror. To be abused, or even to simply exist in an unhealthy relationship, is also to often endure complex, contradictory feelings in which hate and love and fear and dependence and violence and affection and misery and happiness exist hand-in-hand and even simultaneously. To treat portrayals of these kinds of relationships that embrace this uncomfortable nuance as "glorifying" them simply because it's not monochrome in a black-and-white morality play is both naive and insensitive. I also find the coercion of artists into disclosing their various traumas in order to "justify" their creation of their art, as if their trauma must be approved as sufficient by a committee, reprehensible; however I also do not believe that someone must inherently possess some form of trauma to depict it in art compassionately and meaningfully.

I also think that the mammoth amount of cognitive dissonance required to make this the hill that one dies on when the subject at hand is fanfiction and fanart of an 18+, rated-M video game series in which horrible and traumatic scenarios such as rape, slavery, domestic abuse, mass death, and graphic violence are depicted in abundance, and in certain ways with even less sensitivity or tact than the fanwork, shouldn't be lost on anyone, especially since you are far less able to excise these aspects from the source material than you are able to curate your participation in a fandom.

I want to reiterate that your opinions on yesjejunus, or me, or any user on tumblr or any artist on the planet are yours and yours alone to have. Who you follow, who you unfollow, who you block, and who you filter is purely your prerogative and you are encouraged to use any and all choices, tools, and mechanics at your disposal to avoid anyone that you wish, especially if it's for your own well-being. I wish that more people would utilize these options instead of cultivating a climate of fear and paranoia regarding who one “associates” with, and I do despise the term “associates” because it both reads far too much into a random reblog or reply, and reads far too little into a genuine friendship of mutual trust and care. Still, I am severely disappointed that I have to explain that the line is drawn at hounding an artist obsessively for years with flagrant disregard for their own trauma, blaming that artist for one's own complete failure to stop seeking out that which upsets them personally, and talking over or distorting the experiences and trauma of other people to suit one's own vindictive narrative, and this line has been crossed far, far beyond where it lays.

If you're offended or upset by this post then I beseech you to at the very least follow my advice in the previous paragraph and see yourself out, and may we only ever interact again at your deliberate discretion. If you refuse to do that and would rather call for my public quartering while using literally none of the myriad options at your disposal to remove me from your online experience at no charge, then go fuck yourself, and you may dislike my opinions but you can't un-laugh at my excellent shitposts.

Ed.: I would like to reblog this one more time add an addendum in order to bring attention to an update from yesjejunus themself about their side of the situation this week. They explain why they create the art that they do, as a method of coping with and processing their own trauma. It’s okay if you could not possibly imagine yourself coping with your own trauma, should you have it, in the same way. To label the creation of such art for such purposes as something inherently impermissible or ineffective is not only gravely insensitive but factually indefensible, and I must reiterate my own point that if how they do control their own trauma upsets or risks (re)traumatizing you, then why not ensure that you never see it by using the free and comprehensive blocking and filtering options available to you on this website instead of death marching someone who’s already deeply victimized? The word again is control. To control these traumas through fiction and art is an incredibly empowering, restorative thing, and to label this practice as nothing but harmful to others is to ignore the complex and multifacted ways in which trauma takes shape, or can be shaped.

[blankd]

Thoughts on The Mitchells vs the Machines

I watched it a while ago and kept forgetting to post my thoughts on it, but some posts here on tumblr recently reminded me.

I disagree with the majority takeaways I see but is that not the spice of life?

As a standalone movie its inoffensive and the writing of it will likely exit my brain in a few months.  However I can appreciate that the visual style was different from the typical fare and the mixture of 2d elements for visual embellishments were mostly enjoyable and well-suited for Katie as the POV character.

It's a bit "hyper" for my liking, but that's fine, it's likely intended for an audience that's accustomed to the flood that is the current norm of the internet.  It was probably made with GIFable moments in mind and that is the most frequent content that is shared about it, so it certainly succeeded in that regard.

My more critical take is that jokes are delivered at the expense of what could be more authentic themes.  Quips are made that draw attention to character flaws or undercut questions the movie should try to answer, but inevitably they are ignored to move onto the next joke or story beat.

The rest would fall more into spoiler territory, so read more for that.

--"They Were Both In the Wrong"

I personally disagree heavily with the thrust of how "both sides" were wrong when the degrees are disproportionate.

I've seen claims that Katie was "as in the wrong" as her father, but she's incredibly patient to the man who does her material harm.

I've yet to have seen someone say specifically what Katie did *wrong* to her father that is at all on par with the *years* he at best hasn't been able to interact with her or worse, actively refused to engage with her interests.

I would generously venture that her flaw was that she was more willing to communicate her feelings to strangers, but she easily talks to her mother and brother- her brother even helps her with her movies and she happily engages him with his own interests, which pivots the point back to how her father is physically/emotionally unavailable and led to the erosion and distance between the two of them.

Due to this, MvM comes across more as Kaite having to do so much more to guide her father rather than a more mutual learning experience for the both of them.

--"Technology that [Dis]Connects"

It's probably beyond the scope and intent of the film, but I was surprised there was no examination about why technology can be more alluring than interacting with physically present people.

For better or worse, the internet can be used as a means of supplementing the validation and acceptance of family.  It can also lead to no longer connecting to people around them because of the validation high of appealing to a constantly 'awake' sea of strangers- the spotlight is warmer than the cold reality that they are not the internet image they have cultivated.

For example, the rival 'perfect' family was never revealed to be a carefully constructed highlight reel that Mrs. Mitchell envies, they really were actually that perfect- because that provides an easier punchline than an examination or acknowledgement of how the internet can create unhealthy expectations.

I also can't expect MvM to acknowledge the reality that LGBTA+ people who are rejected by their family resort to seeking a new one through the internet because it would be much harder to redeem/rehabilitate a man defined by being tethered to "old values" if he was homophobic instead of "overprotective" and apprehensive at his daughter's departure from home and her dubious art career.

But hey we got that quick line at the end that Katie likes a girl, so that's a diversity win or something.

(To be clear I'm not expecting a whole parade or even an A or B-plot dedicated to it, but I think it should be acknowledged that this kind of "surprise inclusion" is very easily erased with a change of audio and would be completely unsurprised if this were the case for countries that are homophobic.  People can be happy about it, but it is dishonest to pretend that this is a bolder statement than it is.)

In that sense, I do and don't hold MvM to taking a "safer" route about how family always has your back, but this still feels like an important omission considering the focus on technology and its dynamic with the Mitchells.

I will also say that it was also bizarre, to me at least, that the obvious route that her father sees the value of home videos didn't become an active point between him and Katie.  Or that Mr. Mitchell's carpentry never really amounts to anything despite having a sentimental wooden moose.

Lastly, I think it's an unintentional, but it's interesting that Katie going to college to pursue her passion is viewed as a Terrible Thing by her father even though if he had his way, he'd be ostensibly living in the woods away from everyone else except his wife.

This isn't a problem, people are a collection of contradictions, but It's fascinating to see what the *narrative* treats as a difficult sacrifice while simultaneously pulling at heartstrings when PAL cites how children ignore their mothers.  There's an unexamined comedy that Mr. Mitchell's losing out on his 'passion' to live in the woods away from people is treated as tragic despite the movie's insistence on staying connected with your blood family.

--"The Inconsistent Personhood of AI"

PAL is rightfully angry at being discarded for something new; it's provided as a glimpse of what Katie will do when she finds 'her people' at college.

This in of itself is a good hook, because there is no one universal answer to when a flawed relationship should be mended with compromise or if it's better off being broken for the wellbeing of the ones involved.  Family and relationships are not programming, it's a choice and a gamble for whatever it brings but is nonetheless something that must be mutually worked upon.

Initially I thought that PAL was being set up as an exaggerated parallel to Mr. Mitchell.  PAL and Mr. Mitchell did their best to provide for their family.  PAL and Mr. Mitchell are in different stages of being 'discarded' by their family.  PAL and Mr. Mitchell both retaliate at their lack of power in the scenario by using the power granted by their roles to infringe on the autonomy of others for selfish reasons.

PAL even gives a 'chance' for her plan to be halted with, I had assumed this was being set up as the thesis of the movie, about humanity and the value of family, relationships, etc. being used to help someone who is already hurting.

But despite Katie looking at the camera and explaining herself, it is never actually directly resolved or challenged because a punchline was deemed more desirable for this narrative climax.

This begs the question of why PAL bothered with the pretense that she could be reasoned with, especially since this is not some question leveled at all of humanity, just two people.

I'm curious how the writers came to the conclusion that this was the best execution of the scene or if Katie's speech was considered immune to any challenge from PAL.  Would anyone have accepted this outcome if PAL were not an AI but instead a person?

It's not necessarily bad writing they went this route, but I doubt anyone would consider this good writing either.

By the end of the movie, PAL is no longer a 'person' who was betrayed and is lashing out, she is an object to be destroyed because the movie has to wrap up.  No compassion or chances are spared to this AI that did literally everything asked of her except take being discarded quietly.

Did PAL deserve a redemption arc? For this length of movie, probably not.  But it could have concluded with a commitment to doing no further harm.  Instead it is an accidental glimpse at how easily the pretense of compassion can be quickly discarded and mostly unexamined with the right framing.

A likely unintentional example is the conditional humanity given to Eric and Deborahbot who are adopted as "family" while the rest of the robots are mowed down without another thought.  Some are even beaten and broken while begging for mercy, because again, it is a funnier punchline.

Far be it for me to advocate that the murderbots needed 'a second chance uvu' but for a movie whose conceit rests on 'sticking by family' and 'giving chances', the writers certainly made a choice in deciding which AI get honorary humanity and spared violent death- perhaps PAL had a point about humanity's callousness after all.  Bad robots are discarded, good robots get to live.

Even the CEO who realizes he enabled this mess (easily the most unrealistic part of the movie, honestly) is given another chance and he manages to take away a completely wrong lesson.

Speaking of-

--"Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Used Tech Like This"

There's a particular image/gif set posted about MvM with the CEO apologizing for the machine uprising, attributing it to unchecked technology and monopolies.  I've always seen it accompanied by people congratulating the scene as if any of this is at all relevant to the movie.

Charitably, these are people who haven't watched the movie and don't know that PAL is a phone AI single-handedly doing this, but most take the stance that this scene is proof the movie is not saying technology is bad, only corporations are.

The speech isn't technically wrong but it is so utterly divorced from what happens in the movie that it's surreal to see people congratulate it as anything but a moment of soapboxing.

None of the datagrabbing was used at all as part of the takeover.  It's all magical kid-friendly terminators with no relevance to what anyone's browsing history is.  If the company was one that produced robot assistants instead of a being a super tech monopoly, there would be no narrative difference.

The closest to a predatory tactic that is used in MvM is the offer of free wifi which is used to lure most people into their cells which they happily comply with. Curiously this... commentary of people’s mindless addiction to technology is not acknowledged by the Tumblr Court with the same intensity as the CEO’s speech.

But more constructively, I do feel it’s a missed opportunity that Katie who's supposed to be an extremely online person apparently never said any bad things about her family or made any petty vent films for PAL to weaponize.  Instead an in-media audio at one of the outskirt locations was used to accomplish its Traitor Revealed moment.

IN CONCLUSION

MvM is a movie that involves topics that ought to be touched on and explored properly in media and chickens out on all of it due to possible concerns with age-appropriate handling or because it was more committed to its comedy than whatever it has to say about family, change and how technology affects people.

It also reminded me that I hope media will finally graduate from the trope that if you spec into any ‘outdoorsy’ hobby you are incurably afraid of technology.

[vidalinav]

I go back and forth with this...

But I do want the sisters to be close... I think. 

Ultimately, they’re not bad with each other, even if they have such contention, what sisters don’t? They all have shown that they care about each other, enough to sacrifice some part of themselves. Their personalities may be different, but that’s just how family is. If anyone knows how family actually are, as opposed to this kind of weird version of “family” that the IC made, which blurs the lines between romance, family, and co-worker, it’s these three? 

They slept in a room together with one bed, why wouldn’t they hate each other on the simplest level? All of them have gone through some horrible things that cannot be denied on any level. They don’t each really understand each other yet, or even empathize, but I imagine that has a lot to do with the fact that they don’t know each other fully, the whole story of what each of them have been through. No one knows that Nesta was physically abused by her grandmother and emotionally abused by her mother. They don’t know truly why Nesta hated their father or that she was assaulted by Tomas or what she went through in the cauldron or that she hated herself and didn’t want to exist. They can connect some dots, but not in any way that matters. No one knows what Elain goes through on a regular basis, that she is no where near fine, and that her pleasant personality is fake at best, because I’m sure she is not a-okay. They don’t know what she felt when she was younger, being kind of cast aside, by both mother and father really, as I’m sure they were not attentive. They don’t know what it felt like for her to go into the cauldron, and finding out you have a mate right there, and though we’ve seen the effects, we haven’t seen her thoughts. No one knows what Feyre has gone through, the anger, the hatred, the abuse, Under-the-Mountain, killing those fae, being the High Lady now who doesn’t really know what she’s doing, and now having many of her own family kind of not looking to her as that role, because she really doesn’t know what she’s doing and she’s very young and not given too much authority even under the pretense of her having authority. Honestly, if you read all of the books, the parts with only the sisters, they’re not even that horrible. They act like sisters. They do what sisters do. 

It’s a very interesting thing, because I don’t always mean to paint the IC as a horrible group, but they’re group dynamics taint a lot of healing that could be more easily mitigated if not for these additional people who think they know what’s best or who have to think of their court too instead of how well they’re family is functioning. Because Nesta, Elain, and Feyre don’t have this dynamic of being co-worker/family. They only know family. A traumatized version, but that’s not uncommon to anyone in a family. These girls are very young compared to these fae, but they have not dealt with their issues in 500+ years, no one should be telling them how to do things, when to do it, and each of them is more powerful than any of them at any given moment, even probably Elain. Which is why to Amren is like oh look, these three sisters could make you High King. B.S. All three of these girls want support and a good time. None of them want war or power--clearly. 

So, I would actually like them to have a role in these books where they undeniably stand up for each other, not in an individual sense, but in we’re The Archeron Sisters sense and if you do it to one of us, you do it to all of us. Like the Umbrella Academy level of unity, where they come with ugly memories, but they’re like well with the end of the world in sight we’ll just have to make new memories. Becuase honest to god, I don’t want this fake narrative of everything is okay now, and we can move on up. Our families can be joined and all is well.

Give me conflict but also give me understanding. Give me Feyre and Nesta being like wtf Elain when she starts her healing journey and with whoever romance she has, both of them being gossipers and sticking their noses in her business when Elain is secretive and Elain getting pissed, give me Nesta and Elain being like hell no you’re touching my sister simultaneously when Koschei the big bad is like I want one of you or both of you or whatever. Give me Feyre and Elain being like I don’t know what Nesta is doing, I think she’s been hanging out with Cassian too long, has she always been like this? When Nesta gets into inevitable shenanigans because trouble follows her around. Give me all three of them saving the day, because no one can do it better than them. EVER. Because they don’t have any of the skill and they’re just making it up as they go along, as you do, but they’re minds are fresh and their spirits hopeful and they can do this. Give me the Archeron Sisters deciding that even though they have friends outside of themselves, they are sisters. Only sisters. Because they’re forced together by familial ties, because they have a shared history, and they’ve seen each other at their worst, at their ugliest, and they still choose each other now, because through all five books, Nesta, Feyre, and Elain undoubtedly loved each other even if they didn’t understand how that love was shown. Not a sisterhood, or friends that are absolutely supportive, but sisters!

Give me substance or don’t give it to me at all. 

[prairiedust]

More Last Holiday Musings...

I want to poke at that interdimensional geoscope a little more, because upon reading it over again, I think I splashed it up a little fast and there are a couple of points I’d like to be clearer about. I meant to queue this up to post last night but also want it to be up before Gimme Shelter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

This is more blue curtains lit crit with a dash of folklore and an honorable mention for post-structuralism. And we’re talking about Supernatural after all, so this is sort of... well, it’s about endings.

Last Holiday was not a typical “filler” or even a typical MOTW episode. It felt extremely insular, possibly more so than any other episode I can think at any other point in the series. As opposed to the usual crowd of “locals,” a spate of victims, and a couple of red herring suspects, the only other people in this ep besides the Winchesters (including Jack) and Mrs. Butters were the two vampires and Cuthbert Sinclair. There was no “case” as in a usual MOTW-- there was no Chuck Struggle, either, and the lack of mytharc was strange against the lack of “filler” schema. That lack of “MOTW investigation” marked this episode also as being about “curiosity”-- the Winchesters all-too-quickly took Mrs. Butters for granted-- Dean even dismissed her as a “Magic Roomba” and that seemed to settle the matter. Furthermore, the moment that Dean spotted Mrs. B in his room, the stage was set for Antics ™ when she held up his goofy Scooby boxers, and indeed a zaniness, an almost manic energy drove the action forward at a breakneck pace. [Spoiler alert, we do get “investigation” in the next episode, 15x15 Gimme Shelter, as stills and the preview show that Castiel and Jack will be teaming up together, in yet another shake-up of the usual “MOTW” template, almost like we can expect the other side of a coin when Sam and Dean switch places with Cas...] These features set Last Holiday apart as not so much “filler” as “between,” as in there was struggle before, and there will be struggle after, but for a while there was cake. (Contrast this to the usual “peril of the threshold” that usually shrouds liminality if you’d like.)

At the end of Last Holiday, however, we finally get to find out what that old blue telescope really is, and with that name we get confirmation that there are no more alternate universes-- Chuck has burned them all. Viewers are left to come to the conclusion that in retrospect the telescope-thing could have changed the course of season 13 completely. The reveal is played off as darkly funny, but it’s also kind of a gut-wrenching moment, too. All the heartbreak of the last two and a half years, reviewed now through the lens of “if only.” If only they’d known about Mrs. Butters from the time they found the bunker, “none of this would have happened”… they’d have had monster radar, they’d have had the geoscope, they would have had supernatural help of a completely different level.

The temptation to read Last Holiday as a Chuck-free episode is strong, but fraught-- the threat of Chuck’s involvement has been established by a pattern this season (well the pattern is woven throughout the whole series really but Dabb has deliberately structured these last three seasons with an exponentially increasing frequency.) I feel like we’ve been conditioned this season in particular to hold ourselves in a perpetual flinch, to be afraid of what we’ll learn “in retrospect.” That geoscope was really_good_subtext, and it is entirely possible, even encouraged, at this point in the plot to take information we’ve learned from the naming of the object, examine our own conditioned response to this episode, and apply both things to the structure of the season so far and make a prediction as to what might happen in the main plot. That’s what I mean about subtext getting loud. We’ve been given the green-light to make a prediction about The Struggle and march forward with it, and see if we will be correct by extrapolating the pattern, or if that expectation will be subverted (the twist is set up to run either way, so either outcome is satisfying.) It is Melville-esque architecture of the highest degree;I could write another thousand words just about that. So I have a prediction that I’m hanging on to, because of what we’ve learned from the geoscope, and what kinds of clues were hung up in Last Holiday, and I’m super excited to either have my hunch confirmed or be frightfully and delightedly surprised. I mean, where the fuck did Jeremy Adams even come from? He’s like our own Mrs. Butters, showing up in the last quarter to run a couple game-changing balls into the end zone, it’s bonkers. I mean, I know writing mysteries is hard and requires still AND cunning, but damn, son.

But anyway, back to the geoscope… 

I’m perplexed, from a very “lit crit” perspective, but this is where I’m at and why I referenced blue curtains-- if you shine too bright a light on subtext, does it evaporate-- like looking through an interdimensional geoscope and not seeing anything-- or is “subtext” sometimes not some ephemeral fever-dream that we as viewers conjure up through our experiential interlocution with the text but something a writer has steeped into the narrative as part of their craft? Or when you’re talking about an evolving iteration of writers, is it possible that one picks up a thread that another wove in for something else, repurposing or amplifying it? And, when perhaps is something deliberately instilled in the text in order to become “text” at just the right time? In Moby Dick, [spoiler alert lol] Quequeg’s coffin-- formerly one of many symbolic vehicles used to foreshadow the doom of the Pequod-- is repurposed as a life buoy and becomes the actual object that saves Ishmael’s life, transforming it from a portent of disaster to a symbol of salvation and then to one of Ishmael’s guilt for surviving Ahab’s madness-- the guilt that had been made text by the very opening line of the book, “Call me Ishmael.” In retrospect, the connotations of wandering, exile and salvation behind the name that the narrator gives himself become crystal clear. The problem that the post-structuralist model of “reading” as simultaneously “creating the text” has manufactured is that the idea that “subtext” can often be discounted as something dreamed up wholecloth by the reader, and thus inferior, imaginary, even delusional (and I use that last word knowing what a loaded term that is in the spn fandom, but this is not about a ship, even) where once it was considered to be a valid and measurable part of the text itself, like that dang coffin. It was the basement, the underpinnings, the catacombs below the opera house sure, but it helped to hold up the structure. And for some reason, putting subtext into a piece of media has become passe, or cringe? Anyway, not to be bitter on main but it didn’t used to be this way, at least not in the heady early days of postmodernism. So that green light? Critical hit against blue curtains. And while yes, some readings are going to be better supported than others, and the wild variety of checklists in this fandom mean that some conclusions have been drawn which can’t pan out, if you’re paying attention to the structure, the subtexts, the alchemical/psychoanalytical/postmodern themata, the ending will be very satisfying. 

So. What was once speculated to be a symbol for emotional lows or turning points (among other things) in the bunker was textually hit with a bright green light, then Dean got curious about it in text, and we were told-- in text-- that oh it’s just a fancy spyglass, and now that the other worlds are gone, it has no purpose…. that’s what I mean about the geoscope now being “pure”-- it wasn’t clear whether the telescope ever had any function, subtetxtual or not, and now that it’s certain what it’s “function” was, it’s now freed up as a “symbol”-- unless like in Moby Dick it’s new “purpose” is revealed later, but right now it’s caught in this liminal place of not-quite-clue and not-quite-metaphor... 

However, and I didn’t put this in my first post because I was trying to be fast and not a wet blanket, but I felt like finally naming the geoscope was an ending. 

This is literally Singer, Dabb, and Co tidying up the house before locking it behind them.

I think when Dean said he didn’t see anything through the “telescope thing,” that we’re to understand that maybe this was the last hurrah of the cute, zany, campy “subtext” or even “metatext” if you’d rather that so many of us have been parsing and which has gotten so weird and bright since season 12/13. I think I said in one of the folklore posts that writing about some of the things I write about feels like making daisy chains in the endzone during the big game. Which is fun, that’s how I personally got through having to be in AYSO soccer for four years, by looking for four leafed clovers and eating orange quarters. And we got a wood nymph in this episode, textually even, so I could easily check the “folklore” box on this one. But the sheer euphoria of Last Holiday and all the sparkles it brought into the story aren’t meant to last. When you look back on fifteen years of text, a lot of it is bleak, miserable stuff. That’s not to say that episodes like Yellow Fever and Hunteri Heroici and Fan Fiction et al shouldn’t be celebrated. But I think from here on out, things are going to be less “golly gee, three birthdays!” and more “There she blows! --there she blows! A hump like a snowhill!”

This episode was a gift in many ways, not just for the sense of glee it transmitted-- it also did so much work and there are things I want to yell about in the way language was hit, the red versus green lighting, the way the backwards holidays worked, the projector as a metaphor for Mrs. B projecting her regrets and fears onto Jack, the amount of food that was created and consumed, how that smoothie was also an echo of “fairy food” or an underworld pact if you squint-- but the stakes are so high now. We haven’t been shown the next valley-- there was no final scene of Chuck rubbing his hands together like the villain from a melodrama, for example-- but the last image we got was Jack blowing out a candle. After the candle is blown out, the cake is dismantled and consumed. Once the story is over, all the themes that are so hard to grapple in a text like a television show can be gathered up and analyzed. (IS that all, though? After all, Dean made his own cake later, which, like, echoes of the “oh two cakes” comic lol...)

Since I really never want to leave anything I toss out on this blog on a last note of doom and gloom, however, I do want to say that I too understand what that last image meant. It meant, as Sam said, make a wish. Think of the future, think of free will, and hope for something wonderful to happen. (or do like me and wonder what the hell Jack wished for with dread and anticipation ha ha ha.)

[chatsanova]

Have Another Go At It: Chapter 2

AO3

When La Grande Paris and Chloe collapsed, it seemed like nothing Chloe ever did would matter ever again.

Every snap at Pierre, every name-dropped or rule bent in the name of Chloe getting what she wanted, none of it would ever matter again. It didn’t matter before either, Chloe had just tricked herself into thinking it did. Her thoughts went like this: grief, guilt, regret, distraction then denial.

Chloe had always loved being center stage. It was where she thrived her whole life. Sure, her father was always busy, and sure, her mother was always gone, but to everyone else, she was the most famous, the most beautiful, the most worthy of their attention.

Occasionally she’d use her status to make things work in her direction, but Chloe just saw that as using her resources.

At her lowest points, she’d use it to humiliate others, but negative attention was still attention.

To those around her, dare she say, those that care about her, it seemed her reign of boisterous claims and attention-seeking would never end. She’d assumed they thought the worst of her, that she would fall into more destructive means, and slowly she’d become too much for her Pierre, for Sabrina, for Adrien. She’d never deserve them and it seemed most stuck around for employment. Her father paid well for friendship.

Adrien always insisted that he never accepted money as there was no point for him to do so. And well, he was in the same boat. Adrien was the first person that understood her, that knew why she was always clinging to her fame. He didn’t always agree with it, but he understood it. At that point, it was all she could ask for.

Plus, for a long time, she had Adrien’s undivided attention. He didn’t know any other kids, he was homeschooled, and Chloe was the only option for companionship. Maybe Adrien was never paid, but the sentiment of sticking around simply because there were no other options had plagued Chloe as well.

Then he came to school with her. It had taken some convincing, but Adrien’s mother thought it would be good for him, as long as he kept up with modeling.

Adrien’s attention wasn’t undivided anymore. Adrien became fast friends with Alya, also new at school, and Nino seemed attached to Adrien’s hip merely two days in.

Alya and Nino tolerated her but had a nasty habit of trying to stop Chloe from picking fights with Marinette. Adding pure, soft, can do no wrong Adrien into the mix didn’t help.

She’d been forced to mellow out in order to keep Adrien around. It was a lot easier to do so after the incident. Picking fights with Marinette stopped instantaneously, though she could feel Marinette’s irritation at the prospect. Marinette never wanted pity, but it’s what she received, even from Chloe.

Marinette had sort of snapped in a weird direction.

It was like she suddenly felt the need to grow up all at once. She wasn’t at school for 2 weeks and when she reappeared, she looked completely different.

She stopped wearing handmade clothes, she stopped putting her hair into pigtails, she just stopped. Her grades slipped, though the teachers also took pity on her.

Marinette waffled in between efforts for attention and not wanting anyone to notice her.

The new clothing style said attention, Chloe thought, recognizing it in herself.

She got looked at more often for tight-fitting jeans, mesh shirts, and dark lips extenuating her blue eyes. But then her closed-off attitude, her snappy remarks, those were defense mechanisms to push people away.

Chloe realized a long time ago that looks were something you can control. Attention is something happily given to pretty people, and sometimes when you can’t control what sort of attention you’re given, looking a certain way gives you a way to drive your own narrative.

Being in the papers for being pretty is more fun than being in the papers for being a bitch. Chloe and Marinette understood that if you’re going to be a bitch, you might as well be an attractive one. People are more willing to forgive a pretty bitch.

These thoughts occurred to Chloe during her distraction phase. It was easy to be distracted by a girl who was sitting right next to her, silent but present, especially one dressed for attention-seeking.

Neither of them wanted attention right now, and they were both sitting with the precisely right person to avoid it, but Chloe allowed herself to be distracted by Marinette. It was better than the alternative.

Chloe didn’t speak; Marinette didn’t speak.

Maybe it didn’t matter if people noticed you, as long as they kept their mouth shut about it.

She couldn’t remember why they had fought so regularly. They seemed so distant, those arguments. She assumed she had done something entitled and Marinette had done something condescending and they’d argue until someone got involved and they’d part ways until their next encounter. Maybe at that point, both had each other’s attention.

Around Marinette, Chloe felt seen. Not in a positive way but definitely in a way that allowed Chloe to feel better about herself for a few quick moments. They both fought for the moral high ground and both won in their own eyes.

Occasionally, Chloe’s thoughts would circle back around to her parents, but she quickly pushed them away. She had to, otherwise, she’d break down again.

So she studied Marinette’s hair, her eyebrows hidden beneath her bangs. Her eyelashes. Her eyes stared into nothing, or maybe into something deep in her brain. Those tended to be the same. She wondered what she was thinking about.

Chloe had wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees. At some point, was it two? three? hours of sitting on the ground, Marinette said something.

“Do you,” she cleared her throat from disuse, “Do you need a place to stay?”

Chloe looked up sharply. Marinette also seemed surprised at the suggestion, despite the fact that she had offered it.

“Sorry, I’m just thinking... if you needed to...you could stay at my house…”

Of all the things Chloe had thought about, her physical things hadn’t even crossed her mind. Her physical home. Her home had collapsed. She’d cared so much about her shoe collection 12 hours ago and now she couldn’t be bothered.

“Oh…” Chloe lowered her face back into her knees, “I hadn’t thought about it, I guess.”

“Well, If you do…” Marinette trailed off, the offer hanging in the air. It was the official olive branch.

They hadn’t been fighting, but they weren’t friends by any means. It seemed like this was saying, “I’m willing to move on if you are.”

Maybe it wasn’t the right time, or maybe it was the best time. Maybe they desperately needed someone in their corner. Maybe Adrien hadn’t understood Chloe for a long time. Maybe Marinette and Chloe had always understood each other.

Maybe seeking attention meant seeking those that were willing to give it.

“Thank you.” And they fell back into silence.

If Chloe had thought about it, which she hadn’t, she’d probably assume that she’d stay at Adrien’s. But Adrien was in his own headspace now.

Then her thoughts shifted to the denial. This denial was justified, Chloe felt, because Adrien had practically been saying it all day.

“None of this is right.” Which in Chloe’s mind translated to, “None of this is real.”

She had felt the wrongness before but now couldn’t attribute it to anything but grief. People always tried to bargain, right?

What if none of this is real? What if my parents aren’t dead? What if I can get them back? But Adrien hadn’t lost anything. What excuse did he have for making up shit in his brain? This is what Chloe said to herself in order to decide that whatever Adrien needed to do to “fix” things, she’d do it. Because maybe, just maybe, the madman was right. That her parents shouldn’t be dead. That this was fixable.

Nino and Alya had explained their dreams to Marinette. They were more than dreams, they all understood that, but Marinette was having a hard time latching on.

“We just need to know what you think feels wrong,” Nino said. Marinette scoffed, not out of malice but out of frustration. Her arms crossed defensively against her chest, her head shook bouncing hair on her shoulders, her mouth struggled to form words. Adrien understood that frustration, as he was currently feeling it as well. It was not being able to find words that should feel so normal, and knowing something is wrong but not anything else.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what feels wrong! Everything feels wrong!”

It occurred to Adrien that you can’t really feel water when you’re surrounded by it.

Everything about Marinette’s life was wrong, as far as he could tell. He wouldn’t be able to tell you what was correct exactly, only that if you squint really hard something about her was familiarly incorrect.

It wasn’t easy to explain, and he wasn’t the best with words anyway. He glanced at his friends, who returned his glances, each with a tinge of sympathy. He couldn’t tell who the sympathy was directed towards but suspected it wasn’t mutually exclusive.

Adrien was obviously more affected by this phenomenon. Dreams were one thing, but Adrien’s mood had been violently swinging all day. It was to be expected in the midst of a national crisis, but this had begun before the building fell.

He cried when there was nothing to cry at, both in happiness and grief. He felt as though he were living two days simultaneously, one very different, but maybe not much better.  And to him, Marinette was at the epicenter.

Feelings around her thrashed like waves against a rocky shore. He tapped his foot impatiently and crossed his arms, becoming jittery. He paced around the hallway.

“Adrien?” Chloe sounded more concerned than she really should have been. Adrien felt guilty for not being the one next to her to deal with her parents. And then ashamed of his guilt and then ashamed of his own self-pity.

He was so caught up in his own bullshit that he had stood to the side while Marinette, of all people, comforted her. It was bizarre, wrong, and also the best thing to happen today.

“Sorry, I’m just...confused.” His mental failings shouldn’t be a priority right now. People have died.

It wasn’t his place to be more distraught than those around him. His parents were still alive and well, his home unaffected, his life unchanged. That felt incorrect too, somehow. He felt as though his life had changed significantly, just in a way that was unplaceable. Like pointing at it would be pointing at air.

The news outlets and websites said that outside wouldn’t be safe until the next morning so everyone camped out in the main gym. There were a scattered number of teachers that had arrived before the collapse but apparently most had been stuck in a Ladybug induced roadblock.

They instructed students to stay calm and a few reached out to Chloe specifically, checking in occasionally, but Chloe made it clear that the teachers should focus on the other students. They looked surprised at this sentiment, but continued to try to help those who seemed more visibly distraught than Chloe.

They had been advised to stay put until the next morning, so the teachers gathered yoga mats and the school’s few sleeping bags from upperclassmen camping trips. A few blankets scattered the floor. There wasn’t enough for everyone so some used jackets or backpacks as pillows. The students gathered together, select laughter echoing through the gymnasium. But otherwise, it was about as quiet as an entire school of 14-18 years could be.

They struggled through another explanation, but Marinette remained unconvinced. Chloe explained her dream, eerily similar to Nino’s about a purple butterfly and not being in control. They watched her carefully. When she was done, she looked over at Marinette, who looked sympathetic and maybe a little confused.

“I’m sorry, this all seems odd, I’ll give you that, but I just don’t recognize it as familiar.”

They all turned to look at Adrien. He’s the one who needed this, he’s the one with the next step. He had no answers. He hadn't told her his dream yet. He wasn't sure he could.

“No, I’m sorry. Maybe...maybe it’s nothing. Maybe nothing is going on.” he pressed his palms into his eyes, rubbing away a headache he didn’t know he had. “Maybe I’m going crazy.”

“How can you say that?” Chloe glared, “How can you claim, how can you...give me hope that none of this is right, that maybe we’re in some sort of dream, and then just toss it aside like it’s nothing? What if my parents are supposed to be alive right now, Adrien? Do you want to just ignore it? You want me to live a life I’m not supposed to be living?”

“Chloe, I never claimed this world isn’t real, just that it’s wrong.”

“Then that’s what I’m saying. This world...isn’t real.”

“Chloe…” Alya reached a hand out to her.

“No.” Chloe stood, turned, and walked away, leaving Alya’s hand suspended in the air.

For the first time in months, Marinette slept in a building with other people in it. More people than she ever had, really. She slept on a blanket, sharing with Alya and Chloe, who had come back only when she realized she didn’t want to be alone.

She didn’t say that, of course, but no one commented on her return either. They didn’t talk about the feeling for the rest of the night, instead opting for silence or half-hearted plans for the next day.

Adrien said Chloe could stay at his house. Chloe didn’t even have to ask. Marinette and Chloe shared a glance before Chloe agreed.

Marinette had a dream on the gymnasium floor. She wasn’t lying when she said Alya, Chloe and Nino’s dreams didn’t sound familiar, but this one was not unfamiliar .

She stood on a rooftop, wind-battered her skin, and she was cold. She couldn’t possibly be really cold, it wasn’t real, but she shivered. She felt the chill on her arms. It wasn’t right.

When she looked down at her hands she was surprised to see them. She felt as though something was missing from her skin. Her hands bolted to her ears and felt nothing.

In front of her, the scene was incomprehensible. There were two people, wearing garishly ridiculous outfits. It didn’t seem like they should be a threat, but in her dream, her pulse quickened.

One of them had a gun. It wasn’t pointing at her but to an empty spot next to her. Panic ran through her spine all the way down to her bare fingertips. There’s someone missing. Where...where was he? For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to look downwards. She knew something was just below her vision if she could move her neck every time she pulled, her vision remained stiff, forcing her chin to remain level.

The woman with the gun, she sauntered to them, Marinette and the Something. She dipped into her blind spot and came up with a ring. The man, he looked grief-stricken, panicked, and angry.

“NATALIE.” his voice boomed in the quiet city. It...shouldn't have been quiet.

“Relax, boss, once you have the miraculous everything will go back to normal. You’ll have your family back.”

“Then give me the ring”

“Hold on a second, I want to talk to the girl.”

“No, enough of this. Give me the miraculous.”

Then she held up the gun to his chest. Marinette couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything. She was hopeless. She was helpless. She was weak.

“Give me the earrings, Gabriel.”

“Nat-”

A click of the gun, “I’m not asking.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll get you your family back Gabriel, but I want something too.”

“How do I know you’ll bring her back?”

“Because I don’t want you causing me trouble on the other side. Gotta keep you fat and happy. The earrings.”

He held them out. She turned around and walked where Marinette couldn’t see. A shining light sparked into her field of vision. And then a stronger brighter one a few seconds later. And then...and then there was nothing but light.

Marinette woke up her arms tight around Chloe. She gasped (from the dream) and made eye contact with the back of Chloe’s head. She’d gotten so tense during her nightmare that she’d pulled Chloe against her chest.

Okay, I’m big spooning Chloe Bourgeois.

She couldn’t even think beyond that. She felt another body on her other side, Alya sleeping peacefully.

She needed space. Room to breathe. Sitting up proved to be easier than standing up. She managed to get free, grab her backpack, and flee into the hallway, still buzzing with public school lighting. She aimlessly walked the hallways. A teacher stopped her once, she quickly rambled about going to the bathroom and they let her go. She took deep breaths trying to remember everything about that dream. The names. The faces. The location. It already began to blur in her mind. She remembered the gun and the earrings and the ring and the chill on her skin and how wrong it felt. She felt something, someone, missing from her field of vision.

She sat and drew everything she remembered. Her hands, the roof, the gun, the earrings and the ring in the hand of the wrong people. The flashing in the corner of her eye, the grief stricken angry face of the man in purple. The cruelness of the woman in blue. She couldn’t quite remember her face.

Adrien wasn’t going to sleep, he knew that when he woke up this morning. So when he saw Marinette grab her backpack and run, it wasn’t a large leap to try and talk to her. Problem was he couldn’t find her.

“Mr. Agreste, what are you doing up and about?”

“Bathroom, ma’am.”

The teacher narrowed her eyes.

“No fooling around, Mr. Agreste.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He couldn’t remember what he had done to receive a reputation of tomfoolery but apparently word had spread. That wasn’t even his teacher. He almost asked if she had seen Marinette, but that wouldn’t have helped.

He found Marinette on the roof.

“What the fuck, Marinette?”

“GOD! Fuck, Agreste, you scared me.”

“You’re on the roof.”

“Well spotted.”

“Why?”

“Needed some air.”

“Toxic, debris-filled air?”

“That warning came down hours ago.”

“What are you doing?” he gestured to her notebook.

“Drawing, Agreste, what does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re on the ROOF during a traumatic NATIONAL CRISIS. Please just come down.”

“Oh. OH! No, Agreste, I’m fine. I’m good. I just needed to…” she trailed off.

He looked around. From here, you could see where Le Grand Paris used to be.

“The world is fucked,” he ran his fingers through his hair and sat down next to Marinette. She flipped her notebook closed. She was drawing a pair of hands.

“Well spotted.”

“Marinette, I think it’s my fault.”

“Full of yourself, are we? Center of the world Adrien Agreste? The only one who realizes the world is fucked?”

“Jesus, I’m trying to,” he sighed, “Fuck, Marinette.”

They were silent for a while.

“Marinette, your life is wrong.”

"You keep saying that."

"I mean it, I don't think this is how things were supposed to go."

"You can't just brush off things you don't like with denial, Agreste. At least, that's why my therapist says."

Adrien laughed, "Watch me."

"Blondie, I can't help but want to believe you, and that's why I can't do this. Whatever it is you're doing. I can't let myself believe that nothing is permanent. I can't just go along with it because I think I'll see my parents on the other side."

"No, I know that. Of course, I know that." Adrien uses his hands to push himself off the ground, spinning that he's sitting across from her, "I just...Marinette I'm going to tell you my dream."

"Ooookay."

"No, my literal dream, the dream that I had last night, not like, my existential drea- ya know what, never mind."

"No, I get it," Marinette smiles, and it's good to see.

"Alright, I'm on this roof."

His dream starts on a roof. Of course, of fucking course it does.

"And there's something next to me that I can't see. And I'm looking at this roof and there's a guy in purple, with, like, this butterfly brooch on it. It's a ridiculous fucking outfit." Marinette has to smile. "And he's talking some big game about something miraculous. And I'm pissed. I'm angry as fuck. And then this equally gaudy bitch pulls out this canister that's got my MOM inside which is wild, and then I'm cussing this guy out. Just screaming at him. I honestly don't remember what I said. Then he moves to that place I can't look, ya know, that blind spot? And comes back with earrings. Then the bitchy lady comes back and I wake up."

"Wow, that's quite the dream." If Marinette hadn't experienced what she just experienced, she would have thought that's a fairly normal dream dream.

"Now, I know how that sounds."

"Sounds like a dream," she lied.

"No, I know, dreams are crazy in general, but I swear more happened than that. I just, it felt so weird, like I was actually on the ruth, filled with rage. I just need to know who was next to me."

Me. Adrien was next to me.

[dweemeister]

Soul (2020)

2020 dashed the best-laid plans, disrupted dreams, and brought disease. For almost one full year now, COVID-19 has upended society the world over, and taken the lives of almost two million as of the publication of this review. The pandemic, as contemporary readers may notice, has taken its toll on the film industry too. If you are reading this in the distant future, Soul is the first film that I have written in which its release date was delayed and its distribution altered because of the pandemic (from June 19 to Christmas). Pete Docter’s first directorial effort since becoming the chief creative officer of Pixar is part of a phenomenon which may or may not last past the pandemic. Soul, like a few other high-profile releases in 2020 and early 2021, debuted simultaneously in reduced-capacity theaters and streaming, via Disney+. The film itself is middling Pixar. But given the studio’s high quality – albeit sullied over the last decade with underwhelming sequels and glaring missteps from some non-sequels – it is still something worth celebrating.

Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx) works part-time as a middle school music teacher in New York City, but quietly harbors dreams of pursuing his dream of becoming a jazz pianist. Taking an opportunity to audition for professional jazz saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett), Joe receives an offer to play with Dorothea’s band. Ecstatic, speaking giddily on his cell phone on the musical adventure that awaits that evening, Joe has forgotten to look wherever the hell he is walking. As a result, he falls down a manhole, Looney Tunes-style. He awakens as a fluorescent blue-green blob, his soul on a stairway to heaven. No, not yet, Joe says. He runs backwards, but ends up in the “Great Before” – a place where unborn souls are endowed the traits (in the form of a badge) that will direct, but not predestine, the course of their lives. In a case of mistaken identity, the Great Before’s leaders assign Joe to 22 (Tina Fey) as her counselor. 22 has been stuck in the Great Before for eons, fostering a cynical view of human existence that has confounded her previous counselors (“You can’t crush a soul here. That’s what life on Earth is for.”). If you are asking whether or not Joe will be the one that shows 22 life’s beauty, you clearly have never seen a Pixar movie before.

The English-language film’s voice cast also includes Graham Norton as a sign twirler extraordinaire, Rachel House, Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade, Donnell Rawlings, Questlove, and Daveed Diggs. Veteran actress Phylicia Rashad plays Joe’s mother (who disapproves of his dreams of playing jazz professionally). This is the first Pixar movie without a character voiced by John Ratzenberger.

22 and Joe will prematurely escape to Earth, but the plot is unnecessarily complicated by a body swap and a tired trope of modern animated features: a non-white character accidentally spending more than half the film in the body of an animal. The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) and The Princess and the Frog (2009) are among the highest-profile examples of the trope. Like Cuzco and Tiana in those past films, Joe is not white – and, automatically, is someone the likes of whom has very little history of starring in a mainstream American animated feature. To see him lose his bodily agency for almost the entirety of the film is frustrating. The screenwriting team (Docter, Mike Jones, and Kemp Powers) declines to explore Joe’s racial identity, instead favoring the hero’s journey (Pixar has never deviated from this template, but that has not prevented them from making great films) and the predictable pratfalls often present in Pixar’s movies. Soul’s body-swapping comedy not only brushes away any such exploration of racial identity, but relegates the film’s jazz (an African-American creation) as ornamentation, overcomplicates the narrative structure, and interferes with its messaging. None of these issues existed in Coco (2017) – an unabashedly Mexican glimpse into the culture surrounding Día de Los Muertos and Mexican regional folk music all while retaining its primary themes.

Soul shares the introspective spirit of Docter’s previous film, Inside Out (2015). The lack of external adversity in both films allow us to better understand the passions of the main character. Joe’s conflict stirs from within – his dreams and expectations against practicality and unexpected realities. More prevalent than in Inside Out, Soul’s moments without dialogue poignantly depict those contradictions and unmitigated thrills. In Joe’s case, his near-total dedication to jazz is celebrated – never excessively mocked by 22 or any other character. But his passion, the film says (and as revealed through 22’s temporary occupation of his body), cannot alone quench the fullest expression of his humanity. The film is at its best in two types of contradictory moments. The first type occurs while Joe is playing his piano; the other appears when the film stops for several seconds to admire a minor detail, overlooked by everyone passing by except 22, along New York’s streets. In the latter, the film is allowed to take a breath, allowing just the ambient noise to play in the sound mix – the rustling foliage in the wind, the light traffic of one-way streets, the whoosh of passing subway cars. It is the closest Pixar has ever come to refuting Alfred Hitchcock’s flawed, oft-quoted statement that the movies are, “like life with the dull bits cut out.” For it is in some of life’s mundanities that 22 sees life as worth living. It is life’s mundanities that lie at the heart of Soul’s most powerful moments.

With the assistance of a legion of cultural consultants, Soul is, in spurts, a casual, intentionally unremarkable foray into New York’s black community and a faithful depiction of jazz performance. Animation history has long caricatured black roles in various ways, so the Pixar animators took pains to faithfully render hairstyles and varying skin tones to highlight the diversity of appearance in African-American communities. Many reviews of Soul will justly extol the background art, but plaudits must also go to the character design of the numerous African-American supporting figures across the entire film. It endows the film with an authentic vitality that I cannot envision happening in a film released by a studio concentrating on CGI animated features. A short scene to a barbershop underlines this laudable attention.

As a pianist and violinist, one of my personal pet peeves while watching movies is when an actor is fake-playing an instrument – it can be comically, pathetically obvious. I am certainly not the only one, as I’m sure some orch dorks, band geeks, and other instrumentalists might attest. Animated movies are not spared our eyes and ears. Soul, however, represents a glorious break from expectation. In a film already boasting photorealistic backgrounds and uncanny lighting effects, Joe’s piano playing is some of the most “realistic” I have seen in an animated film. His posture and muscular movement made me forget, momentarily, I was watching an animated movie. Perfectly rendered, too, are his fingering patterns (for the sake of consistent character design, Joe has elongated fingers). This musical accuracy extends to all other musicians in the film, too. It is glorious to behold as a musician. Soul could easily have cracked jokes at the expense of Joe’s passion. That the film affirms his love for jazz, all while tempering his desires (through 22, his mother, and other factors), is a high-wire balancing act that triumphs.

Soul’s score is split in two: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails fame (2010’s The Social Network, 2020’s Mank) compose for the scenes in the Great Before and jazz pianist Jon Batiste composes for the scenes in New York. Anyone who has read in my past reviews about my thoughts about film music are probably guessing that I dislike Reznor and Ross’ compositions for film. They would be correct. So far in their nascent film scoring careers, Reznor and Ross’ ominous synths for David Fincher’s movies sound too much like background droning, minimalist aural wallpaper. Their scores – all texture and little else – have no life outside the contexts of the movies they appear in. In Soul, Reznor and Ross develop a soothing synth sound that is some of their most melodic film music yet. It sounds like Jerry Martin’s music for the less interesting moments from the early Sims and SimCity soundtracks. Still, the score – even in its best moments, such as the lustrous cue “Epiphany” – suits the portions of the film it appears in. Perhaps Reznor and Ross are finally making progress towards understanding how melodic structure can dramatically reshape a film’s drama.

Down on Earth, Soul plays the music of Jon Batiste, perhaps best known as the bandleader of his band Stay Human on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Not all of Stay Human’s members were selected to perform for the score, as Batiste chose a handful of musicians from outside his band. The jazz score is mostly original, but includes variations on four pre-existing songs: “Space Maker” (Walter Norris), “Cristo Redentor” (Duke Pearson), “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart” (Duke Ellington), and “Blue Rondo à la Turk" (Dave Brubeck). Batiste’s jazz influences are too many to name for a review not solely dedicated to the score, but suffice it to say that Batiste intended his part of the film score to serve as a soft introduction to viewers who might not be accustomed to jazz. In this half, Batiste captures the bustle of New York City with his signature floating piano solos. Backed by tremendous saxophone lines, percussion, and double bass, this is a decidedly acoustic affair in marked contrast to the music of Reznor and Ross. The musical contrast is profound, easing the viewer into Soul’s occasionally chaotic narrative structure. By film’s end, though, despite Batiste’s end titles cover of The Impressions’ “It’s All Right” (a wise selection in no small part due to its lyrics), I wanted more from the jazz half of the score and wished it was held greater prominence in the film. Am I unashamedly asking for someone to hire Jon Batiste and give him the freedom to compose an unconstrained jazz score? Of course!

In a year where straight-to-streaming movie releases have dominated the American film industry, Soul ranked third in viewership behind Thomas Kail’s live stage filming of Hamilton (2020) and Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). Has Pixar righted its inconsistent form apparent over the 2010s decade? Can they ever recover the alchemy that reeled off consecutive pop culture touchstones and wondrous films for fifteen years (1995’s Toy Story to 2010’s Toy Story 3, excluding Cars)? Soul might not be the fair winds needed to steer Pixar from its worst habits, and it is unfair to place such a burden on this film. That fifteen-year run might also never be matched again. For what Soul represents to Pixar’s rather monochromatic leadership and narrative groupthink, it is a fascinating step outside the familiar.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Blyat

ne of the films i was looking forward to, like, years ago was The New Mutants. If you follow this blog, then you know I'm a massive fan of Magik, the teleporting mutant sister of Colossus and Hell-Lord of Limbo. In come canon, including the main 616 Marvel universe, Illyana Rasputin is even in line to be Sorcerer Supreme. The second Fox announced there would be a New Mutants flick, i knew my darling Darkchylde had to make an appearance and, much to my joy, she would, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy. Perfect f*cking casting, man. And then the film was relegated to oblivion for years. Whispers of a movie that should never be screened abounded and i was loosing hope it would ever be released. I lost interest after a while but, after he Disney merger, it got a release date! And then the Wuha happened. Eventually it was dumped into theater with absolutely no fanfare. Recently, there have been digital releases and the hard copy blu rays are coming out in a few days so i bit the bullet and decided to finally check it out.

The Great

Look, i told you before, the only reason i wanted to see this movie was because of Illyana and the fact they cast Anya Taylor-Joy was straight up perfect. This sh*t is tantamount to RDJ as Iron Man or Jackman as Logan. It was just that perfect. And, like those other actors i just mentioned, she embodies Magik as a character, even if her accent is a little iffy. Magik is easily the best thing about this film and, overall quality be damned, Anya’s portrayal is worth the price of admission.

The Good

The concept of a capeflick meets horror film was a stroke of genius to me. I thought, similarly to a Doctor Strange flick, that melding of genre could be incredibly interesting. There’s a lot of potential that can be tapped there. The fact that they opted to adapt the Demon Bear arc of the New Mutants story line lent itself to a horror narrative perfectly. I was glad this was the narrative they chose to bring to the big screen first.

The visual prowess of this film is unassailable. This thing looks much more expensive than the budget they were given. Magik’s soul armor, the ethereal visage of the Demon Bear, that hellish flair of Limbo, and even the Smiley Men are all rendered with aplomb. I really enjoyed the look of this film.

The escalation of Dani’s powers was portrayed pretty earnestly. The fact that Dani Moonstar can manifest the nightmares of those around her so, having that as an anchor to this films conflict was a stroke of genius. You can get some pretty incredible visuals when the narrative revolves around the nightmares of traumatized teenagers.

There is some solid direction in this thing. You can tell that there was a story to be told and

The representation in this cast, and the cast as a whole, is amazing. I absolutely adore it. Dani is native American and they cast Blu Hunt in the role, an actual Lakota. That was dope. Dani is also, canonically, lesbian. They didn’t even shy away from this, writing a relationship with the Scottish mutant, Wolfsbane, portrayed by Maisie Williams. I was actually really surprised they would even present that aspect of the character, which frustrates me even more that this thing didn’t get the necessary attention it should have. That level of representation continues with Henry Zaga as Sunspot, both of whom are Brazilian. Even Dr. Reyes is represented by a woman of color in Alice Braga. That sh*t is dope as f*ck. I also need to mention Charlie Heaton’s Cannonball. That southern accent was hilarious. Plus, as kind of a bonus, f*cking Marilyn Manson voices the Smiley Men. What??

I just really want to emphasize how much i adored the relationship between Dani and Rahne. That sh*t was f*cking beautiful!

That f*cking Demon Bear, tho!!

LOCKHEED!!!

The Bad

The pacing in this flick is borderline schizophrenic. You never feel like you have enough time with these characters or their development but, simultaneously, we spend way too long getting to the next scene. It’s weird to see in a proper, big budget, flick tied to a blockbuster franchise like the X-Men.

This film was edited by someone with tourettes. It feels like there is a whole ass second movie that can be constructed by what’s missing from this one. It’s coherent enough but there is definitely a cut of this film that has more exposition and far more fleshed out characters

The climax, while riveting and everything i wanted to see in a New Mutants film, seems rushed. This thing should have been a whole ass spectacle but they didn’t have the budget for it, which sucks, because this thing could have been one of the best X-Films if the studio actually believed in the damn thing.

The writing in this thing is pedestrian at best. People don’t talk like this, let alone teenagers. It’s weird hearing certain things come out of these character’s mouths, like it’s forced or rushed. I think the script could have used at least one ore rewrite to really focus these characters and make them feel like proper people and not just tropes in a movie.

The Verdict

This movie feels small, almost Shyamalan-esque, but with none of the genius and all of the limitations. Watching this makes me fell all of the disappointment i felt at the end of Glass. Just like the bookend to the Unbreakable trilogy, The New Mutants has lofty ideal and well of potential but it never reaches any of that. I mean, the premise is genius, the framing mechanism is brilliant and the cast is perfect. None of it comes together in a coherent package, though. It feels all over the place, like there is no direction or focus. I can see the forest through the trees but i don’t think anyone in charge of this production could see anything other than dollar signs and it really shows. New Mutants isn’t as bad as Dark Phoenix but i can tell that this version is a completely different movie than what was originally presented and i think that film might have be absolutely terrible. New Mutants feels like a first attempt, like a Phase One MCU film. It’s not Thor, for sure, but it ain’t Iron Man ether. It;s literally about as good as Incredible Hulk. Yeah, that’s a good comparison. They’re both entertaining movies with great ideas, solid cast, and decent performances but it’s nowhere near as good as the rest of the better films in their retrospective franchises. The New Mutants is worth a watch if you’re a fan of the X-Frachise but, if you wanted to pass on it, you wouldn’t be missing much.

[smokeybrand]

Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Blyat

One of the films i was looking forward to, like, years ago was The New Mutants. If you follow this blog, then you know I'm a massive fan of Magik, the teleporting mutant sister of Colossus and Hell-Lord of Limbo. In come canon, including the main 616 Marvel universe, Illyana Rasputin is even in line to be Sorcerer Supreme. The second Fox announced there would be a New Mutants flick, i knew my darling Darkchylde had to make an appearance and, much to my joy, she would, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy. Perfect f*cking casting, man. And then the film was relegated to oblivion for years. Whispers of a movie that should never be screened abounded and i was loosing hope it would ever be released. I lost interest after a while but, after he Disney merger, it got a release date! And then the Wuha happened. Eventually it was dumped into theater with absolutely no fanfare. Recently, there have been digital releases and the hard copy blu rays are coming out in a few days so i bit the bullet and decided to finally check it out.

The Great

Look, i told you before, the only reason i wanted to see this movie was because of Illyana and the fact they cast Anya Taylor-Joy was straight up perfect. This sh*t is tantamount to RDJ as Iron Man or Jackman as Logan. It was just that perfect. And, like those other actors i just mentioned, she embodies Magik as a character, even if her accent is a little iffy. Magik is easily the best thing about this film and, overall quality be damned, Anya’s portrayal is worth the price of admission.

The Good

The concept of a capeflick meets horror film was a stroke of genius to me. I thought, similarly to a Doctor Strange flick, that melding of genre could be incredibly interesting. There’s a lot of potential that can be tapped there. The fact that they opted to adapt the Demon Bear arc of the New Mutants story line lent itself to a horror narrative perfectly. I was glad this was the narrative they chose to bring to the big screen first.

The visual prowess of this film is unassailable. This thing looks much more expensive than the budget they were given. Magik’s soul armor, the ethereal visage of the Demon Bear, that hellish flair of Limbo, and even the Smiley Men are all rendered with aplomb. I really enjoyed the look of this film.

The escalation of Dani’s powers was portrayed pretty earnestly. The fact that Dani Moonstar can manifest the nightmares of those around her so, having that as an anchor to this films conflict was a stroke of genius. You can get some pretty incredible visuals when the narrative revolves around the nightmares of traumatized teenagers.

There is some solid direction in this thing. You can tell that there was a story to be told and

The representation in this cast, and the cast as a whole, is amazing. I absolutely adore it. Dani is native American and they cast Blu Hunt in the role, an actual Lakota. That was dope. Dani is also, canonically, lesbian. They didn’t even shy away from this, writing a relationship with the Scottish mutant, Wolfsbane, portrayed by Maisie Williams. I was actually really surprised they would even present that aspect of the character, which frustrates me even more that this thing didn’t get the necessary attention it should have. That level of representation continues with Henry Zaga as Sunspot, both of whom are Brazilian. Even Dr. Reyes is represented by a woman of color in Alice Braga. That sh*t is dope as f*ck. I also need to mention Charlie Heaton’s Cannonball. That southern accent was hilarious. Plus, as kind of a bonus, f*cking Marilyn Manson voices the Smiley Men. What??

I just really want to emphasize how much i adored the relationship between Dani and Rahne. That sh*t was f*cking beautiful!

That f*cking Demon Bear, tho!!

LOCKHEED!!!

The Bad

The pacing in this flick is borderline schizophrenic. You never feel like you have enough time with these characters or their development but, simultaneously, we spend way too long getting to the next scene. It’s weird to see in a proper, big budget, flick tied to a blockbuster franchise like the X-Men.

This film was edited by someone with tourettes. It feels like there is a whole ass second movie that can be constructed by what’s missing from this one. It’s coherent enough but there is definitely a cut of this film that has more exposition and far more fleshed out characters

The climax, while riveting and everything i wanted to see in a New Mutants film, seems rushed. This thing should have been a whole ass spectacle but they didn’t have the budget for it, which sucks, because this thing could have been one of the best X-Films if the studio actually believed in the damn thing.

The writing in this thing is pedestrian at best. People don’t talk like this, let alone teenagers. It’s weird hearing certain things come out of these character’s mouths, like it’s forced or rushed. I think the script could have used at least one ore rewrite to really focus these characters and make them feel like proper people and not just tropes in a movie.

The Verdict

This movie feels small, almost Shyamalan-esque, but with none of the genius and all of the limitations. Watching this makes me fell all of the disappointment i felt at the end of Glass. Just like the bookend to the Unbreakable trilogy, The New Mutants has lofty ideal and well of potential but it never reaches any of that. I mean, the premise is genius, the framing mechanism is brilliant and the cast is perfect. None of it comes together in a coherent package, though. It feels all over the place, like there is no direction or focus. I can see the forest through the trees but i don’t think anyone in charge of this production could see anything other than dollar signs and it really shows. New Mutants isn’t as bad as Dark Phoenix but i can tell that this version is a completely different movie than what was originally presented and i think that film might have be absolutely terrible. New Mutants feels like a first attempt, like a Phase One MCU film. It’s not Thor, for sure, but it ain’t Iron Man ether. It;s literally about as good as Incredible Hulk. Yeah, that’s a good comparison. They’re both entertaining movies with great ideas, solid cast, and decent performances but it’s nowhere near as good as the rest of the better films in their retrospective franchises. The New Mutants is worth a watch if you’re a fan of the X-Frachise but, if you wanted to pass on it, you wouldn’t be missing much.

[leviathangourmet]

Dear profs X, Y, Z,

I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.

A counter-narrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews.

None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.

Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number.

I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.

Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. No discussion is permitted for non-black victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of non-black violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd.

For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.

The claim that black interracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices – as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.

Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat administrations.

The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence. This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles. I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.

The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.

There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’: hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship. Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist.

MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?

As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors. And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise.

Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.

It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.

The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.

No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race.

I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM. I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda and the Party’s uncontested capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic.

I condemn the manner of George Floyd’s death and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was anything other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal end. I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no grovelling handmaiden to politicians and corporations. Like us, she is free.

[captaiinkick]

                      𝟘𝟘𝟙 .  RELATIONSHIPS 

* THE LOVERS, REVERSED ; disharmony, loss of balance — ZIA

    it’d be instinctive to think the chemistry between captain kick and babydoll would transcend into their real-life dynamic, will has had issues communicating with zia. none of it is her fault, of course; to in any way mislead her into thinking it is would pain him even more. the conflict began back during the team’s first run, and fifteen years or so later it lingers. the feelings were there - will knew how zia felt, and he reciprocated the feelings since the very beginning. zia has always been the only person he’s ever pictured himself being in a relationship with ( reason why he never came close to establishing anything official with anyone else. he tried several times, but he kept coming back to the memory of zia and how unhappy he felt without it ). however, he always simultaneously feared and dislike the thought that forcing them together would drive them further apart. he didn’t want their relationship to be a mere fabrication, a narrative crafted for the sake of toy sales and viewer ratings. in his stubbornness to keep it from happening, will distanced himself from zia, effectively damning the relationship from seeing the light of day. he regrets all the discomfort and suffering he may have caused her, but he’s yet to learn to make himself available to her and get over his worries to make their connection work. of course it’s easier said than done, but will doesn’t want to think of what would happen if something were to go awry in one of the missions, and the two never got to experience the relationship they’d wanted & deserved.

* THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, UPRIGHT ; change, cycles — ALEC

   will never really knew how to feel about alec -- well, actually, he did, but it was too chaotic and ever-changing to put into words. the few constancies in his attitude toward the other man remain, however. it all stems from will’s own insecurities. he’s become convinced he’s not the best fit for the position of the team leader, namely because it should be filled by someone like alec rather than himself. he excels in every way in which will doesn’t, and it scares will to his core. he constantly thinks of the many ways in which the team would benefit from having alec as the frontrunner, and he’ll get so consumed by his own stream of thought that eventually the idea of stepping aside and giving his position up to alec will begin taunting him. but at the moment, all of this remains unvoiced. the one thing that makes will feel like his stay is worthwhile is being at the head. it’s become such a relevant influence on his self-confidence, his identity. without it, will doesn’t know what would become of him, but still he can’t say it doesn’t feel unjust to deny the team the leader they deserve. 

* STRENGTH, REVERSED ; insecurity, doubt — LAURA

   will’s aware that he wasn’t particularly close to laura back in the 80s. he felt there were a couple barriers between them, namely the different ages and the nature of their positions ( captain kick would be seen mainly with babydoll, after all ). still, behind the scenes, he made sure for them to be on at least good terms. there was some contact throughout the years, but it was admittedly more sporadic than with other exemplars. now, however, will’s perception of laura has changed, if he were being honest. they are similar to those which he holds for alec, in the sense that it pains him to see someone clearly more qualified, skilled and deserving of a leadership position remain under ‘his’ command. he carries a bit of guilt for this, and is often unsure as to whether or not to divulge this to her. again, this is mainly out of the fear that once the bureau and the exemplars discover that they’d be better off following someone else’s calls, then that makes him dispensable. 

* THE EMPEROR, UPRIGHT ; authority, control — CESARE

  things with cesare have always been tricky. will’s opinion on him shifts from time to time. sometimes, he’ll delight in some wishful thinking and hope the two could reap the benefits of a more balance partnership. it’d be for the better, after all. this whim, however, is often shot down in the face of an argument or a disagreement. will thinks it wrong to challenge cesare’s position ( surely the bureau granted him that degree of authority for a reason, and being born into a family who instilled in him an admiration toward hard workers, he simply cannot bring himself to disregard him on that basis ). however, that doesn’t mean he’ll stay quiet and agreeable all the time. the two have starkingly different views as to how approach certain parts of the missions -- will lets himself be lead by emotion, while cesare’s strategic thinking is unparallaled. so whenever it gets too much, there’s bound to be a clash -- in times like these will doesn’t mind being a bit more brazen than usual, since he very well knows the lives of so many are at stake. 

   at the same time, will admires and envies cesare. he wishes he could be that collected when under pressure, or that he had his ease with words. he wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, however, given the bureau’s undermining of his performance ( will doubts he would make it through that kind of pressure ). sadly, more often that not whichever positive feelings he has for him will be placed on the back burner as conflict between the two unfolds. 

* TEMPERANCE, UPRIGHT ; finding meaning, patience — DAMIEN

   yet again, will wishes this relation, in particular, could be less complicated. then again, he’s to blame for it. back during their first run, will felt guilty damien would be forced out onto the sidelines. he wanted to make sure he felt welcome in the team. slowly, their conversations became more common, and nowadays will would say the two are good friends. they bonded during very personal moments, and many of his favorite memories are of times spent with damien. however, it is a bit more complex than that. naturally, there are so many aspects of damien’s life that will is not aware of, and out of a fear that he’d be overstepping any boundaries, will maintains his interactions with damien as formal, ever so nonchalant, but never entirely honest. he conceals most details of his own personal life to damien too. while he wishes he could bring himself to be honest, will cannot find it in him to own up to this helplessness and vulnerability. troubling damien with that burden has never been an option. so for the most part, will relies on small talk, and the moment it crosses that line, he feels exposed and bothersome. the last thing he wants is to bring damien’s mood down, or have him waste his time keeping watch over him. though, there are so many similarities between the two that surely neither of them have realized, and they could definitely become great sources of support for one another if will weren’t so afraid to admit defeat. 

* THE SUN, UPRIGHT ; joy, celebration — TANGO

   will likes tango. while he was initially startled by the sharpness of his fangs, it soon became clear that the ferocity and wildness that the media used to characterize him was far from the truth. tango was kind to will in a way some people weren’t, but more importantly, he always treated him with dignity. this never failed at moving will, and he’s never managed to grow angry at the other. he admires how well-meaning and resilient tango has remained, especially considering the media’s scrutiny and the bureau’s treatment. that being said, there are so many things about tango that intrigue will, but he finds it impolite to ask and/or pry. he would also like to know more about what life with such heavy involvement from the bureau has been like, but again, will thinks it might be insensitive to ask such specific, obvious questions -- or worse, that more than just come off as nosy, that it’ll bring more attention to his strict living conditions and somehow prompt him to feel downtrodden. truly, will thinks tango deserves the best. not only has he had to deal with having the reputation he did, to have the coverage bite into the narrative of ‘wild beast’ so frequently. he knows it is hard, but will wishes tango could enjoy a much freer life once the missions are over and done with. 

* THE HIGH PRIESTESS, UPRIGHT ; inner voice, intuitive — BETH

   beth and will are very similar on so many levels. they are both natural caretakers and seek to ensure everyone’s wellbeing. but much like with damien, the extent to which will voices his deeper, more emotion-heavy thoughts is very limited. he has a good relationship with beth, but he is not always honest with her. from what she has disclosed to him, and the few letters exchanged here and there, will got the feeling that she was doing fine. and if that is the case, will is happy. beth is someone who he felt also didn’t get to thrive back when the team was first assembled, and being responsible for accounting so many civilians, he thinks it is about time she got more recognition. 

    at the same time, will wishes there could be a more transparent channel of communication between them. her accident with the faulty wings wasn’t a secret, but will’s thoughts and emotions in the aftermath were never extended over to her. ever since that happening, will’s become more apprehensive and protective toward the team since he has realized there are external factors at play that he can’t control. he so deeply wishes he could bring it up in a discussion with her, but he doesn’t want to go there fearing it’d be like pouring salt into a wound.  

* THE MAGICIAN, REVERSED ; illusions, out of touch — ADDY 

will wishes he could be like addy. he has never had it in himself to be reckless, to be impulsive. the fact that addy manages to pull them off with such ease is admirable in his mind ( it even becomes an enviable skill in his eyes ). he understands that to be forced into such a one-dimensional character must’ve been rough, but he is mostly blinded by the awe and wonder which he’s always experienced when seeing addy out in the field. seeing her stunts used to make him feel like a kid, all full of excitement and a thirst for adventure. he lived vicariously through the unrestrained attitude of the character, because he felt like he was not allowed to act in such a way as a child. he always looked up to addy in a way, and how she balanced tallahassee’s exuberance with her own aim to keep everyone safe. deep down, he wished he possessed that ability, that he would stop feeling so self-conscious and tied down by his inhibitions- since he can’t, he’ll just resort to watching addy continuously do it with that unparalleled facility. 

* JUSTICE, UPRIGHT ; clarity, truth — BENJI

   will feels a lot of respect toward benji. he has always helped not only will, but the team as a whole. he could confidently call benji one of the pillars of each operation, and has no clue what would become of each mission were benji not involved. will has always watched benji do his job with a certain curiosity and intrigue, even though he didn’t grasp most of the concepts benji’s work oversaw. not a day goes by where will doesn’t feel thankful for having druid on board, but sadly, the difference in their positioning and tasks during the missions felt like somewhat of a barrier between the two. now that the team is back together, will has been trying to gather some courage and voice the admiration he feels towards benji. he thinks of pendulum, and how much was left unsaid when she passed, so he doesn’t want to make the same mistake again.

[myfandomrambles]

Jess Mariano Character Analysis (Expanded)

Facts:

Abandoned by his father as an infant

Grew up with a neglectful mother

His mother dealt with minor alcohol dependency throughout his childhood

mother dated “losers, “deadbeats” giving an unstable childhood.

Seemingly smoked from a youngish age, and found taking beer as minor normal behaviour for him

Was sent to live with an uncle he had little of a relationship with

was continuously hated by the town

formed a bond with Rory and became very attached

Struggles in school while understanding most of the material.

Sticks to solitary behaviours

Has very limited social interaction. Only seeming to form connections with few people.

Mother goes through periods of radio silence.

Finds he would rather be in stars hollow than his original home (NYC)

Breaks taboos and rules often.

Runs away when faced when he fails high school and fights with his uncle

Searches for belonging with his biological father

Was willing to come to celebrate his mother’s marriage, even when he was wary of her husband and didn’t have a trusting relationship with his mother.

finds himself through creating and working within the art scene

Analysis:

Jess is a character who simultaneously is presented as a cliche Bad Boy, and love interest in many ways, but is also a character who breaks the dichotomy  of Lorelai’s world vs Emily’s world, he isn’t either of these worlds which makes him a standout character even if he isn’t a lead for the majority of the show. But in a thematic and plot way, he is seamless in the story. His plot is reminiscent of many of the full-time leads, and struggles with many of the same problems of our leads but coming from a different background and world.

When the show starts Jess is already jaded and grown in ways he shouldn't be yet. He's experienced a lot of material and emotional hardships with no one even attempting to help him understand. He's casual about drinking, smoking, sex, and having to support himself. But he isn't exactly mature, he does all these things without being able to process them or react to new stress well. He is still a teen who feels he has nothing. I think he experiences something a lot of kids who experience unstable childhoods do simultaneously having to be older than you are, but not getting there in a way that allows it to be true maturity. Often struggling once you are a real adult to having the context to work with what you know.

His relationship with Rory is one that is s central point in both of their narratives. It’s sweet and cute at a lot of times, romantic in the way only happens with people who aren’t yet adults tragic in how it ends.  Their relationship was also kind of cursed from the start having formed while Rory was still in love with someone else. The relationship also is plagued with problems in the form of neither of them knowing how to communicate. Jess is working through everything from his childhood, and Rory has a warped vision of relationships she can’t push through. Jess is also overly attached to Rory because he’s the only person she even likes, and the only person who shows open affection for him. The first end to the story is a kind bittersweet tragedy, it’s ar a crossroads point in time for both of them.  It’s done beautifully with Jess knows this is goodbye and Rory I think kind know too, she’s not surprised he cut and run, though she is of course hurt.

After he runs away he stays in love with her but doesn’t ever properly communicate. He is still used to cutting and running, and Rory is tired of being the one left behind. This is exemplified in the scenes where he admits he loves her but neither of them knows what to do with it, then when he asks her to run away with him she can’t trust him. Then at the bookstore, we notice he still loves her, but she doesn’t love him. This clearly hurts jess, but by that point, he has a life to fall back on. But their relationship did change them for the better Jess references her being the only one who really believed in him, and He pushes Rory back into college. His reality check helps remind Rory that she isn’t only a Gilmore like her grandparents but also a Gilmore like her mother. Reminds her of her dreams and talent. He pushes her to try and not let Emily mould her into what she wants her to be. In A Year In The Life, we see him again help Rory find her way, his ability to be a foil to her erratic way of viewing the world is even stronger here as he has been in a stable life for a while, and he still cares for her quite a bit.

Jess’s relationship with Luke is the second most pivotal during the story. It’s an extremely dysfunctional relationship. This comes from Jess never having had a real parent figure he can’t accept Luke’s attempts to support him. Luke has never been a father before and having stunted emotional communication make it hard for him to articulate his thoughts. He can only show his care through actions. Buying him nicotine patches, building him a room, bringing him back from new york and trying to get him to stay in school. Another factor in the struggles they have is Luke is equally connected to Lorelai & Rory. He considers Rory his responsibility as much as Jess, even taking “her side” after the car accident. Their relationship does form into a deeper connection after Jess starts to find his way and appreciate what his uncle meant to do. When Luke visits him at his job and then when Jess visits in AYITL we see that they are able to truly connect as they both learn to work on their struggles. We also see through that Jess still has his characteristic slightly cynical view on the world easily assuming Lorelai is leaving Luke instead of trying to have Luke just ask her what's wrong. Though he does still come to visit him before the wedding showing he does support Luke and Lorelai's wedding even if he and Lorelai were never best friends. 

As for his mother Liz, by the point, he enters the show she has sent him away instead of dealing with his mental health and behavioural issues. He even only calls her by her first name and doesn’t really try and repair the relationship even when he comes for her wedding, it’s clearly based around Luke wanting him there. Then even after he comes from her wedding she never tries to involve him in the future up to him never meeting his half-sister Dula. She is clearly a neglectful mother, not out of any kind of malice but by never being able to put him before her own whims. She dated around, married multiple people they all describe as loser and deadbeats, not getting to know jess as a person and struggling with implied alcohol addiction (ex: she has only ever been sober for one wedding). This affects him greatly and a large part of his character is learning what to do with this. In AYITL Jess explains he has to go help his mother and sister after they joined a cult, within the narrative, it comes across as mostly an explanation for Jess leaving and where the other characters are. However this raises a question of how much connection Jess has to his mother and sister at this point, and it shows he might have taken up Luke's role of bailing Liz out now that he's an adult. 

Lorelai and Jess are generally antagonistic most of the time, though she does work to apologise when Rory is in love with them. Their visceral reactions based on their similarities not based on differences. Neither of them grew up in a loving household, neglect and poverty in Jess’s case and psychological and emotional abuse for Lorelai. Jess is a lot like a young Lorelai trying to do anything to rebel from the status quo, he acts as a mirror to her past mistakes and some of her personal issues. Jess dislikes her she’s just another judgmental adult, she actually does understand what he’s going for trying to connect with a teen like that doesn’t work right off the bat, they have to see it. She isn’t actually thrown off by him being rude that isn’t her problem, she only really gets defensive when he attacks her relationships and motives. Then he worries he might hurt her daughter and friend also.

I do think Jess is being a jerk in their conversation in Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy with her because he didn’t want to be there. But I don’t read him assuming she is sleeping with luke is just wanting to be a jerk, I think that was honestly what he assumes. In Jess’s eyes that would be bad and the only reasons, someone would view another person as that good. People dating and marrying his mother was destabilizing form as a kid I think in his mind if Lorelai was that to Luke it would just follow the pattern.

He is averse to Stars Hollow style of life, but he also seems to want the security of that lifestyle. Even choosing to come back after returning to New York for a period of time. He wants to be close to Rory again hoping she would choose him, and he is going back to the only stability he’s ever had.

The rest of the town generally hates him because he pushes back on many of the assumptions they have with life.  He doesn’t want to be part of the town and doesn’t believe in the small town interconnection. Jess doesn’t believe that the way stars hollow is a family is worth people being nosy or wanting him to be someone he isn’t. None of the town regulars cares about him, takes his motivations into account, or listens to Rory or Luke when they say he isn’t the worst bad guy. Dean and he are rivals for Rory’s affection, Jess usually pissing Dean off in the process.

The only other person who likes him at all is his girlfriend Shane, but their relationship is shallow and I think they both knew that. Jess dates her I think because he came back to Stars Hollow to not be alone, he assumed Rory wanted him as well. But Rory is gone for the whole summer cutting him off, so he hangs out with someone who will pay him attention. They also do a lot of PDA and possibly go further it's not clear again I think it's some form of connection that doesn't include his emotions. Shane doesn't really seem all that upset that there is definitely an aspect of their relationship that is showing off for Rory. She doesn't like it, but i don't think she's as hurt as she could be becuase i don't think she loved jess also seeing it as just some fun. This relationship also doesn't make him anymore liked in town, or give him a connection to Stars Hollow. 

Jess seems to simultaneously be bored in school but also struggles to view himself as adequate.  He has no drive to finish school and cuts and runs instead of facing fallout, being pushed over the edge when he feels like Luke is angry with him too. He doesn’t ever flex the intelligence he has or skills with writing till the end. This is stated to be because of boredom and wanting money, I also think that he probably missed things in school. People who have unstable childhoods often miss multiple days in school, struggle to focus while in school, and may find it to feel impractical with so much else going on. Even if someone could understand and excel when given the information you can miss lessons that are hard to make up. As you get older there become things teachers assume you know, particularly in math, science and foreign language courses.

His lack of self-esteem often makes him rejects attention while also seeming to really want healthy connections. Or he experiences an obsessive connection as he does with Rory. This also plays into not always paying attention to what he needs and not believing he can be more than other people assume he is.

Jess acts out from wanting to express his anger which is then fed by the town anger and rejection of his presence. He does stupid stunts and fights with the people he loves. It’s a think a way to express anger and somewhat to get attention (usually Rory’s or Luke’s) he does want someone to care but doesn’t know.

Jess makes mistakes that hurt Luke And Rory. With Rory, some top examples are stealing her bracelet, not communicating with her and leaving without ever talking to her.  With Luke, the mistake is mostly mutual neither of them know how to show or accept affection from the other. Jess usually resorting to trying to piss off his uncle and Luke not figuring out how to deal with issues before he reaches a breaking point. These problems are greatly connected to his trauma but are still things he should have tried to work on.

Jess is a character who I find is either demonized or over-romanticized. I think what both of these reads mistakenly view him as only a romance character, basing almost their entire read of him through a high school romance or Nicholas Sparks book lens.  The reason Jess works in this story aren’t those influences they are present but why he works is he a different view on the main themes of the story.

It’s undeniable that Gilmore Girls is a story about family/generations, culture differences, and dealing with broken family relationships. Jess is driven by these themes as much as Rory or Lorelai. The family/generations theme isn’t as in your face with Liz and jess not sharing much screen time, but it’s still there, it acts mostly as prologue but it’s still the inciting event in his arc. His story with luke is also based on family, a found family arc to some extent. Then with broken relationships again his story is based on dealing with the fallout of his abusive and neglectful childhood, he isn’t managing broken relationships like most of the others but managing the way it changed him. Jess is an arc of someone having to overcome this, and it causes him to crash many times. Lastly, the culture clash is still important, You have the blue blood yale culture, the small town of middle-class Americana, and then Jess is a person who lives in shit in a dirty city. I think those themes are the crux of why jess works, his character is another view on the themes and motifs the story is built on, like with the others those motivations drive his relationship with Rory.

Jess is a character who only was major in two seasons but manages to be one of the most loved people on the show. He’s a character that if you watched it as a kid/teen you probably crushed on a little bit. He’s controversial but relatable to people who have similar backstories and his level of disillusionment with life plays well on the rose-coloured manic world Rory and Lorelai inhabit.

There is also such a skilful ability that even with it being slightly scattered his growth in the later seasons is believable, at each stage we see how he was able to internalize what he learned during his main arch and work it into his natural art and survival instincts. I wish we had seen more of it, but it is also one of the most hopeful and real stories on the show.

ADHD:

Inattentiveness

hyper fixations

Hyperfocus

Misunderstanding social input

Stimulus seeking

RSD

Hyperstimulate

Inability to focus in school

Works better in environments of action or art

Impulsive behaviour

Irritability

AVPD:

Struggles with maintaining relationships

avoids face to face interactions

negative self-perceptions

A safe person with Rory (ie: I don’t like anyone else)

Hides his feelings

avoids participating in group activities

heads off rejection by leaving or ignoring the problem

Avoids situations of both praise and rejection

Don’t believe he can succeed for much of the show

[fieldbears]

Washed-Up Stucky MNF/Fic Writer Provides Endgame Opinions

I’m going to try to tackle this linearly, at least to begin with:

I am very much Team Bored With MCU Hawkeye, but I want to give sincere props for the cold open, which I think accomplished several things simultaneously: recapped the consequences of the last film (since, hey, it’s been a fuckin while), set the tone, and began Clint’s narrative arc.

That said, jesus, I’m still irritated by the shoe-horned family to begin with. First they were invented for convenience and narrative stakes, and then their final, ultimate reason for existence was to be temporarily fridged. Take a moment to imagine a world where Clint was the circus runaway loner he was supposed to be, who only had his coworkers as found family, who either responded to The Snap by throwing himself harder into his teamwork work OR went rogue because his sense of justice and agency was so fucking destroyed by what happened. He didn’t need a blood family to have the arc he had. And he didn’t even need the arc he had. But this is a bitchfest about a choice made many years ago, not made in this final movie.

The first third of that movie was rough. The whole thing had the narrative flow of “A Series of Related Short Stories Played One After the Other”, but the first third seems to be Failing To Establish the New World and then Clumsily Establishing The Emerging Situation.

The establishing shots and scenes to show the audience what The Snap’s consequences were worldwide were... lacking. It’s dark? No more baseball? People are relying on natural light instead of interior lighting, but this is also happening at Avengers HQ, where they clearly still have power and internet access to work their tech, so... was it just an aesthetic choice? I feel like the film tried to spend time showing us what the consequences were for the average New Yorker, but instead we get a weird Canonly Gay Russo Character who gave a good performance that tells us about the human loss but not about the mechanics of this new world. We get the ‘no baseball’ shot and all we get afterward are ‘people miss the missing people’. But restaurants still exist? Businesses are functioning? (Wouldn’t New York run kind of smoother if it wasn’t overpopulated?) I feel like we were invited to start thinking about how this dystopia works, but were never given answers. (There are so many interpretations of how things could go wrong if certain people just disappeared, and their knowledge/access were suddenly unavailable, and none of it was explored, even briefly, outside of establishing shots.)

The Garden Planet - it’s discovery, the traveling to it, the fight there - lacked emotional grounding in a way I find hard to explain. The audience was excited for Brie Larson being a fucking boss, and the quick execution of the grab-him-and-cut-his-arm-off plan was satisfying, but the twist and subsequent letdown was just a weird beat after a slog to get there, after waiting on a deep letdown beat from the last movie.

Last thing about flow and emotional beats, because I want to move on to character analysis, and this is a huge one for me: Clint’s fight in Tokyo and Steve’s fight with himself were some of the biggest missed opportunities in the entire film.

Not counting the football field brawl at the end, which I don’t count as a real fight scene, these are the two major fight scenes of the entire film and as far as I can tell, there was no effort made to make these showpieces. They went to the trouble of bringing Clint to Bladerunner Central, and pit him against the last bastion of aesthetic-obsessed mafia in the world. The panning camera in the interior as Hawkeye fought goons brushed past lazy fight scenes that only showed who was winning, not the brutality that Clint was supposedly falling into, not the grit of this new awful world, just... shapeless dark bodies getting thrown through windows? And on top of that, they could have made up (or picked from canon) any Big Bad to pit him against outside in the street, and we get an Orientalist sword fight that could have fit in nicely on a CW superhero show, and some of the most unnecessary exposition dialogue I have ever heard. Someone bothered to weave Clint’s arc in earlier, with Rhodey explaining to Natasha that Clint’s gone International and also Worryingly Dark. Why the fuck do we have the ‘I’ll give you anything you want’ line, on the rotten cherry on top of ‘stop being mean to the yakuza, we didn’t start it’? You already covered his motivations with the cold open.

And while Steve’s fight ended in a FABULOUSLY HEARTBREAKING WAY, the fight itself was nothing - you can pick little character details out like how they both ditched their shields almost immediately, and it was funny that Then-Steve mistook Now-Steve for Loki in the first place, but it was still a completely lost opportunity to get one true superhero battle in this three-hour slog. Both Steves could have gotten up and carried out the rest of the narrative after a decent brawl, but instead they fall a great distance after some blocked shots and it... was nothing? Missed opportunity for some cool shit.

Okay, skipping to character assessments now:

Clint’s character has been mishandled from the beginning and this seemed to be the “better late than never” eleventh hour arc. Except the end of the arc is unclear - it made sense for him to fall apart after losing his Shoehorn Family, but how did Natasha’s choice to fall do anything but fridge someone else, with more agency this time? It makes Natasha noble, which she already was, and it made her win against Clint, which I appreciate, but Natasha didn’t need salvation through death and Clint learns nothing by getting them back, just experiences relief.

Bruce. I want to say, first, that I love Hulk in a Cardigan. Cardihulk can stay. I want fanart, I want t-shirts, give me all of it. But Bruce’s explanation of “I scienced it so I could get the best of both worlds” only gives us half of the acceptance that Banner’s character is already working towards. As we saw most explicitly in Ragnarok, the Hulk isn’t just a physical form, he has his own separate consciousness, originally defined by rage but revealed to be more complicated. Bruce merging into Cardihulk seems to have... erased Hulk’s separate consciousness without merging it into himself? If there had been some acknowledgement of a second voice still within him that shot out opinions or demands for certain menu items in the diner, this would have been a much cleaner end to his arc, which has been equally messy between actor and narrative shifts.

Speaking of Ragnarok... it’s time! Are you ready? Have you read articles about the Gambit Gambit too? Are you fucking depressed that a fat suit was used for comedy gags in the year of our lord 2019? Because I was. The Russos seemed to... not struggle with what progress Ragnarok had put onto Bruce and Thor’s characters, but reject it. This movie’s Thor was anxious for laughs, was desperate for easy answers to a a feeling of lost heroism, and it didn’t feel like a familiar character. The time-travel scene with his mother wrapped it up very elegantly, and was well performed, but that scene didn’t need to follow a series of “chunky drunk in sweatpants” jokes to show us that Thor was struggling. Everyone in the film is fucking holding on by their fingernails, but only one is played for cheap laughs.

At least we get the bisexual Asgard lady king we deserved.

Tony got the right death. He got a hero’s death and Pepper’s last lines of “you can rest now” were exactly the right lines to wrap up an arc characterized by fear and a desire to protect and control at any cost. I knew the MCU was never going to really acknowledge that Tony’s The Problem, even with lines like ‘you should have let me do the fascist robot thing, that was gonna work fine’ thrown around pretty much as soon as he touches down on earth again.

I’m not sure if there’s much to say about Natasha. It was fitting that she was running HQ, that she was struggling, that she was rejecting emotional help from Steve but clearly still close with him. Seeing her break down after hearing the report on Clint felt right after, I think, being told by several directors (or making the personal acting choice? idk) to just be as flat and as decolletagey as possible. And again, while I feel like she would be self-sacrificing on that cliffisde if given the opportunity, and that she would win, the narrative choice to place her there and have that be her end didn’t really give her anything she didn’t already have. She had nothing to prove.

I have a hard time really laying out my thoughts on Steve without launching into the pregnant absence of Bucky, but I’m going to try. Chris Evans did a good job being the emotional heart of a really fractured story with a lot of conflicting pieces. Seeing him lead a talk therapy session after The Snap seemed very out of character for him until one realizes that Sam isn’t there to lead it himself. His scene offering help to Natasha was another good scene between them proving that not every m/f relationship has to be sexual to be interesting or add to the plot. His leadership speech during the Stupid Fucking Slow-Mo Heroes’ Walk to the platform was well done and makes me think of what could have been for the MCU, if they’d ever just let them be a cohesive found-family team for twenty minutes and let them fight some doom-bots or something. Fuck. Imagine.

Something weirdly satisfying about the deceitful ‘hail hydra’ line in the elevator. Yes? Yes.

The hammer scene was satisfying to me without being too gratuitous, but I’ll acknowledge that some people weren’t into it. Having paid more attention to Steve’s arc than most, I’ll argue that he earned it several times over.

His ending - that is, the secret life he alludes to but doesn’t explicitly reveal to Sam - is earned too. I’ve read at least one thing saying that Steve’s arc was all about him learning to let go, but that’s... never what Steve does. Not at the end of any arc, of any comic story, does Steve let go. Not of his principles, not of the people he loves, he is always “Thinking... Thinking About Bucky!” and getting in fights he can’t necessarily win. So I don’t think his final ending is ever Learning to Let Go. I think it’s fair that it’s Just Once, Just This One Time, Getting What You Want And Getting To Enjoy It.

And now I’m backtracking to Bucky. I’ve read one article already that theorizes that Steve’s arc, which was highly prioritized, included literally as little direct interaction with Bucky as possible because... the MCU? the Russos? Marvel?...  is aware that Steve/Bucky is the most popular same-sex ship in the MCU. And that’s tiresome as fuck but I think there’s some truth to it. I wonder if, like in Civil War, we’ll hear later from the actors that a lot of contextual one-on-one scenes were shot and then mysteriously cut from the final edit.

I will say that in my head, Bucky is relaxed when Steve goes back in time for the final time, and lets Sam goes to talk with Steve one-on-one at the bench, because Bucky is not worried if Steve will come back, and does not feel a need to check on Steve on the bench. Because, like Peggy, Bucky has been getting secret visits too. Maybe as far back as during his time in Wakanda, but certainly since the final fight with Thanos. Bucky was calm because he already knew. He didn’t miss Steve because Steve hadn’t given him an opportunity to do so.

d

[shesgottawatchit]

Eve’s Bayou (1997), dir. Kasi Lemmons

The 1990’s saw a transition in African American filmmaking when Black Female Directors started to emerge in the industry.  One Director in particular, Kasi Lemmons, rose to critical acclaim with her directorial debut Eve’s Bayou (1997) which met to extremely positive reviews and remains an important and influential text concerning themes of race and black feminist ideologies.

When examining feminist texts within African American Cinema, it is crucial to study the representations of Black Womanhood throughout the history of Black filmmaking, especially texts derived from female directors.  Early representations portray the black female through the use of stereotypes (discussed previously) in the form of the Mammy, the Mulatto, the Jezebel or Sapphire.  The black female identity is often linked to the body, presented as exotically intriguing or erotic; she is hyper-sexualised which contrasts the more passive white female character.  Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou manages to connect these ideologies of Black Womanhood, while simultaneously subverting them to approach such concepts on a feminist level, discussing the mistreatment and misrepresentations of Black Womanhood on the big screen.

Born February 24, 1961 in St. Louis, Missouri US, Kasi Lemmons made her acting debut in television movie 11th victim (1979).  She went on to star in Hollywood hits such as Spike Lee’s School Daze (1988) and Academy Award winning The Silence of the Lambs(1991).  In 1997, she emerged in the industry when she wrote and directed her first feature length film Eve’s Bayou, starring renowned actor Samuel L. Jackson and upcoming actresses Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Meagan Good.  Eve’s Bayou centralised on Black family life, narrated through the main character Eve, the youngest daughter of the Batiste family.  Bayou delivers themes of adultery, sensual eroticism, supernaturalism and witch craft, all of which are tied together in black ancestry and history; depicting the more social and family oriented problems faced by middle class Blacks, situated in 1960’s Louisiana.

Eve’s Bayou

Lemmons’s opening party scene immediately sets up an idealised Black middle class life and emphasises the centrality of Bayou’s female led cast.  Matty Mereaux is dancing with her husband Lenny Mereaux, close up shots of him groping her buttocks are shown; her body parts are immediately fetishized.  Moments later she dances seductively with Roz’s husband Louis Batiste; she pulls up her dress to reveal her stockings and places her head around Louis’s groin area.  This sultry depiction of Matty’s character becomes problematic when applying Laura Mulvey’s work: Visual and Other Pleasures of ‘The Male Gaze’ to the text.  Here, Matty is seemingly objectified by the male viewer to be offered as none other than a placement of sexual desire for the male viewer.  However, Bell hooks, a pioneer of  her work on Black spectatorship, in particular Black female spectatorship, challenges and attempts to deconstruct Mulvey’s theory of ‘the gaze’ stating Black audiences can “both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at one another, naming what we see”.  Black female spectators have thus since been able to adopt anoppositional gaze, placing white womanhood in the eye of the phallocentric gaze, enabling them to not “identify with either the victim or the perpetrator” (hooks, 1992)

Not only does this opening scene construct themes of erotica and woman as objectified beings.  Lemmons’s overall set up, choreography and mise-en-scene is a huge movement away from previous African American depictions, seen in early 20th century texts.  Here, the Batiste family, are portrayed as a well-mannered, well-spoken middle class family, with lavish clothing and a large country home.  A huge contrast to the savage and uncivilised representations of tribal African Americans portrayed in early Black Cinema.  As the majority of the cast is formed of Black actors and actresses, this idyllic family unit provides the ability for white audiences to identify more closely with Lemmons’s characters.

“the representation of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego of the male hero stands in stark opposition to the distorted image of the passive and powerless female character”

                                                                       Laura Mulvey, 1975/1989, p. 354

Mulvey theorises that male characters play a dominant, powerful role within the narration, while the female characters must submit to a more passive, powerless position in cinema.  Mulvey argues that the audience adopt ‘the gaze’ as we constantly view texts through the dominated male lens of the industry, although “the power of the gaze is not invested in all men, but in White men, and the object of the gaze is not all women, but White women” (Hollinger, 2012, p. 194).

Roz comforts her three children after Mozelle’s vision of a child being hit

One way Lemmons subverts this idea is to centralise her female characters.  Eve, the youngest daughter of the Batiste family and her adolescent sister Cicely play a vital role in the progression of the narrative and it is they who hold the power over there adulterous Father Louis.  Alongside their Mother Roz and Aunt Mozelle, together provide a primary example of female solidarity.  Mother Roz is shown to empower the family unit, unlike Louis, whose Fatherly absence only heightens Roz’s empowered status.  hooks states that “once black folk had gained greater access to jobs, revolutionary feminism was dismissed by mainstream reformist feminism when women, primarily well-educated white women with class privilege, began to achieve equal access to class power with their male counterparts”  (2000, p. 101).  Black women and black feminist ideologies were pushed aside once White females started to benefit from feminist movements – “working class white females were more visible than black females of all class in feminist movement”.  However Black women were the voice of experience, “they knew what it was like to move from the bottom up” (hooks, 2000, pp. 103-104).

White women primarily benefited economically from the reformist feminist gains in the workforce, “it simply reaffirmed that feminism was a white woman thing”

                                                                           bell hooks, 2000, p. 107

Although she is subject to notions of patriarchy, (she stays home while Louis works to keep their home) this is quickly dismissed by the audience due to Louis’s controversial actions of adultery against his wife.  His affair with Matty (stereotyped as the Jezebel) interwoven in the plot, highlights mistreated stereotypes of Black Woman.

Cicely is slapped by her Father after she attempt to kiss him

Although these women initially appear empowered in Bayou,it is needless to say that Lemmons still intersects themes and ideas already imposed on black women in film.  Firstly Eve adopts the role of the maid, who does the family chores and cleans the house; several of her costumes reflect this and she is even seen with a feather duster cleaning.  Alongside this, Matty is presented as the whore, who endeavours in a relationship with Louis.  Despite the period setting, for such a contemporary text, these representations still manage to surface in contemporary Black Cinema as a constant reminder of the painful history of Black colonisation and slavery in early 20th century America.  Another character devise that Lemmons utilises to explore Black history and the mistreatment of female slaves is through character Cicely, who we believe is abused by her Father.  It is not until the end of the film that we are told it is her who instigated an incestuous relationship with her Father.  “The elusive qualities of truth are given attention in the film… Lemmons provides two sequences of the same event, each bearing the narration by a different character…  both Eve and the audience have to deal with two versions of a truth that each character professes” (Donalson, 2003, p. 190)  From her actions, she is muted throughout the film; powerless and unable to reveal what really happened.  Cicely’s powerless state can be seen as symbolic of the mass rape that occurred on plantations to multiple slaves across America.  In narrative form, this becomes complex due to Cicely’s initial confession and the film’s final twist.  Either way, the audience is still partial to the implied rape of an adolescent by her Father.  The final shot we see of her as she leaves the Batiste family home is her signalling to Eve to keep quiet.  This can be seen to parallel the voiceless African American Slaves, especially the abused woman who could not fight for their rights as slaves, let alone their civil rights amongst a prominent  patriarchal society.